Sister Death, a day of celebration: Assisi gives Francis his last night

Psalms 141:8

⁸For you, Lord God, I turn my eyes. In you I seek refuge; do not abandon my soul.

Galatians 6:17

¹⁷Furthermore, let no one cause me any more embarrassment, for I bear on my body the stigmata of Jesus.

[vb ref invalide: Sg 3, 1-2]

Sister Death, a day of celebration: Assisi gives Francis his last night

An entire nation pauses today to commemorate a death. Since 1977, Italy had not observed a public holiday on October 4th. This Sunday, October 4, 2026, eight centuries to the day after the visit of Francis, it restores to its patron saint the place it had removed from the civil calendar. What it celebrates is neither a birth, nor a victory, nor a foundation. It is an agony on bare earth, in a tiny chapel, at the foot of a city.

A country comes to a standstill before a dying man

The return of a public holiday

The gesture is stranger than it seems. States like to celebrate their founders, their battles, their constitutions. They rarely take a day off for a man who gave everything away, even his clothes, in his town square. Yet, by a law promulgated last autumn, the Republic reinstated this day of celebration. It did so by invoking peace, fraternity, solidarity, and respect for creation. These are beautiful words, and they have become so broad that everyone can fit into them without changing a thing.

This is where the Church must be vigilant. A saint can be honored in a thousand ways that distance them from the people. They can be made into an emblem, a logo of gentleness, a patron saint of gardens and good feelings. Francis of Assisi experienced this dilution long before the laws of the Republic, and he resisted it with all his poverty. The public holiday is therefore not a victory for faith. It is an uncomfortable invitation: a people who rest on the day of the death of a poor person wonder what that poor person still has to say to them.

A day when an entire country marches to Assisi

The day's program reflected this invitation. The basilica's bells rang out at one minute to midnight to open the festivities. During the night, thousands of pilgrims walked the city's paths, along the very road that leads to the Portiuncula. At midnight, Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, papal legate for the basilicas of Assisi, celebrated the Eucharist in the lower church, very close to the tomb. This place, containing the saint's bones, is now open for veneration.

This morning, the solemn Mass is presided over by Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference. The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, is in attendance and will later address the nation from the loggia of the Sacred Convent. Around them stand representatives of Italy's regions, the mayors of its capital cities, and ambassadors from numerous countries. An ancient tradition dictates that each year a region provides the oil for the lamp burning before the tomb. This year, Umbria is offering it, and the Mayor of Assisi is lighting the flame on behalf of all the Italian municipalities.

The meaning of a lamp

An oil lamp says nothing grandiose. It doesn't impose itself; it watches over us. It slowly consumes a substance that someone has given and that will need to be given again tomorrow. It is a true image of Franciscan life: a poverty that is not a lack, but a gift that is renewed. And it is also an image of Christian death. It is not a flash of light, but a fidelity that continues beyond the one who lit it.

That an entire nation should come together to fuel this flame is a lesson that neither speeches nor ceremonies alone can convey. It must remain when the cameras have left, when the ambassadors have returned to Rome, and when the holiday has become a regular occurrence. The real question of this centenary is not about the ceremony, but about what will still be burning on Monday morning.

The death that Francis has tamed

The evening of October 3, 1226

Francis died on the evening of Saturday, October 3, 1226, at nightfall, at the Portiuncula. Having lived as he did, he wished to die naked, stripped bare, on the ground. His first biographers, Thomas of Celano and later Bonaventure of Bagnorea, report that he had himself laid on the ground, that his brothers covered him with a borrowed garment, and that he asked them to remind him that he no longer owned anything. He blessed the brothers, he blessed the city of Assisi, and he led the singing.

This is not a pose. The Poverello is exhausted by his eye disease, by the weariness of the journey, by the wounds of La Verna. But he insists that his death be a final sermon. He turns his back on prestige, honors, on everything Assisi would already make of him. He wants his brothers to see that a Christian can face death without fear, because Christ has already passed through it.

In his letter to the Franciscan family at the opening of this centenary, Pope Leo XIV recalled that Francis welcomed death as a sister, a man finally at peace. This expression, which concludes the Canticle of the Creatures, remains one of the most audacious gestures of Christian spirituality. It is not a question of minimizing death. Francis knows its cost; he witnessed the plague of Perugia, imprisonment, lepers, and wars between cities. But he refuses to treat it as the ultimate enemy, since Christ himself passed through it.

In a world that shields death from view, entrusting it to specialized institutions and concealing it behind technical jargon, these words resonate harshly. They are demanding for both believers and doubters. It is not about embracing death, but about ceasing to live against death. The life of Francis, a man who relinquished wealth, military glory, and comfort, is like a long preparation for this final stripping away.

According to sources, in his final moments, Francis intoned the psalm traditionally attributed to him: «Deliver me from prison, that I may give thanks to your name; the righteous will surround me, for you have been good to me» (Psalm 141:8). This psalm is that of a man imprisoned, abandoned, crying out to God from a cave. It is strange that the saint of joy chose a psalm of distress as his departed. But this is how Franciscan joy should be understood: not as forgetting the ordeal, but as the certainty that it will not have the last word.

The prison from which Francis asks to be freed is not only his worn-out body. It is also the weight of the world, its divisions, its suspicions. And this "the righteous will surround me" finds a singular echo today. Eight centuries later, thousands of pilgrims, heads of state, and schoolchildren surround his tomb. The promise of the psalm, in a sense, is being fulfilled before our very eyes.

A marked body, a offered flesh

Two years before his death, on Mount Alverna, Francis received the marks of the Passion in his flesh. The Apostle Paul had written to the Galatians: «From now on, let no one trouble me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus» (Gal 6:17). For Francis, this saying ceased to be a metaphor. He bore, in the literal sense, the seal of the crucified Christ, and he tried to hide it from his brothers so as not to glorify it.

This discretion is essential. Francis's stigmata were never for him proof of holiness. They are a painful and silent communion with what Christ experienced. When the Church displays his remains for veneration today, it is not to fascinate, but to remind us that Christian faith is expressed through bodies, wounds, and hardships, and not just through ideas. One cannot love Christ without accepting that love comes at a price to the flesh.

It might seem surprising that in the 21st century the Church still displays bones. Contemporary culture often prefers images, symbols, and narratives. The Church, however, persists in believing that holiness leaves a material trace. This belief has deep roots: faith in the resurrection of the body is the very foundation of the Creed. We do not believe in the immortality of a soul that escapes the body, but in the resurrection of the whole person.

To see Francis's bones is to experience that holiness is not an abstraction. He had weary feet, diseased eyes, hands full of invisible nails. The pilgrim who stands before these remains does not venerate relics like a collector, but proclaims that this body is destined for life. And he discovers himself in the same condition: beloved dust.

The word for this evening in the Franciscan tradition is Transitus, the passage. Every October 3rd, the friars commemorate it: they read the account of their father's death, sing the psalm, and gradually dim the lights. The liturgical feast day follows the next day, because the liturgical day begins the evening before, and Francis died after sunset. The friars thus say that death does not interrupt the feast; it opens it.

The Book of Wisdom expresses it in terms that could be applied to Assisi this night: «The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the sight of the foolish, they seemed to have died» (Wis 3:1-2). What the world sees as an end, faith receives as a birth. Eight centuries later, those who make their way to Assisi at night are not honoring someone who has passed away, but someone who lives. This is the difference between a monument and a witness.

What the festival questions today

A peace that cannot be reduced to a single word

Francis was never content simply to preach peace to those who already loved him. In 1219, in the midst of the Fifth Crusade, he crossed enemy lines to meet the Sultan of Egypt, Al-Kamil. He came neither to persuade him by force nor to negotiate a treaty. He came to offer Christ, with a gentleness that his contemporaries considered imprudent. The Sultan listened to him, received him respectfully, and let him go.

This often-recounted scene retains its significance in a world where wars are returning to the borders of Europe and the Mediterranean. It offers no diplomatic solution, but rather a style: approaching others without weapons, without contempt, and without naiveté. Francis knows he is risking his life. His peace is not the absence of conflict, but a way of holding his ground amidst the conflict without becoming like what he is fighting.

Pope Leo XIV came to Assisi on August 6th to meet with the young members of the Franciscan family, and then with the ministers general. In January, he opened a Jubilee Year, which runs until January 10, 2027, and includes plenary indulgences. His choice to address young people first is significant. Francis was twenty-five years old when he left his father's house. He is not a saint for the nostalgic, but for those who are still wondering what they will dedicate their lives to.

The message the Pope addresses to the Franciscan family is both simple and demanding. He hopes that peace may find a profound resonance in the Church and in society today. This wish is modest in its wording. Its consequences are immense: a Church at peace does not speak like one side, it does not seek enemies, it accepts defeat so that the other may live.

The choice of Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi to preside over this Mass is not insignificant. Archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, he is known for his commitment to mediation and dialogue, and for his close ties to the Sant'Egidio community. He himself stated that this public holiday was an opportunity to rediscover the figure of the patron saint, who profoundly shaped the character of his country.

This message must be heard in its truth. A national character is forged over time, through repeated gestures, celebrations, and silences. Italy received from Francis a way of inhabiting the land: a certain modesty before beauty, an affection for the humble, a tenderness for animals and stones. But it can also forget it. Each generation must choose anew whether it wants to remain a child of this poor man, or merely live in the shadow of his basilicas.

Poverty that is not just a backdrop

The most difficult question remains: what do we do with a saint when everyone wants to celebrate him? States, brands, associations, political parties, schools, tourists—everyone is pulling Francis in their own direction. There's a real risk that poverty will become a communication tool, that fraternity will be displayed, and that environmentalism will be reduced to slogans. The beauty of a public holiday shouldn't obscure the fact that Francis had no heritage to defend.

The friars themselves had to fight against this temptation from the day after his death. They built an immense basilica on the hill, and the dispute over poverty divided the Order for centuries. This tension is fruitful, provided it is not resolved too quickly. The Sacred Convent can be both a treasure trove of art and a place where we remember that Christ had nowhere to lay his head. But this requires constant vigilance and a humility that refuses to consider itself a finished product.

Little is said about what happened at San Damiano while Francis was dying. Clare of Assisi and her sisters kept vigil, themselves ill, enclosed within their cloister. They could not witness the death of the one who had made them his chosen plants. But they prayed, and they preserved, in silence, what would become half of the Franciscan legacy: a quiet contemplation, which sustains the city unnoticed.

This silent vigil reminds us that great celebrations always have their dark side. Alongside the official ceremonies, the speeches, and the ringing of bells, there are hands praying in the shadows. Even today, communities of sisters, brothers, lay people, and the sick carry this same memory. A society that would honor Francis without honoring this invisible aspect would only reap the surface. It is in these vigils that the saint continues to live, far more than in the media-driven celebrations.

What can one do, practically, with this centenary when one is not in Assisi? The answer lies in humble gestures. Visiting a sick person and remaining silent. Giving someone back what one owes them. Giving away something superfluous, and offering it quietly. Praying a psalm of distress this evening, entrusting to God a prison from which one longs to escape. All of this is small, and that is how Francis began: by raising a stone from San Damiano, then another.

We must also face death head-on, without distancing ourselves from it, without making it a taboo. We must speak of our deceased, visit their graves, accompany the dying, and accept being accompanied ourselves. A civilization that has forgotten how to die has forgotten how to live. This public holiday on October 4th could become, for Italy and for all of us, a quiet school of remembrance. If every home found a moment of silence on it, the holiday would already have borne fruit.

Eight centuries have passed, and the scene remains the same. A man on the ground, brothers around him, a psalm, night falling, a city sleeping above. Nothing spectacular, nothing official. And yet, from this moment were born cathedrals, laws, hymns, vocations, national holidays. This should make us reflect on the true value of great things: they almost always arise from gestures that go unnoticed.

Tonight, when the crowds have left Assisi, the lamp will still be burning before the tomb. It will say nothing. It will continue to consume the oil donated by all the communities of the country, and to illuminate a place where only the footsteps of pilgrims can be heard. It is up to us to join it, each in our own way, so that the words of Francis do not remain in the past but become what they always intended to be: a way of walking toward life, even calling death our sister.

Lectio divina

Read also: Saint Francis of Assisi, the transfigured poor man

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