800th birthday of St. Franz from Assisi - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1982 - 60 Pfennig

800th birthday of St. Francis of Assisi; 87. Deutscher Katholikentag Dusseldorf 1982 When Giovanni Francesco Bernadone, as Francis of Assisi is called by his full name, was born around 1182 in Assisi (Italy), no one suspects that he will die as a Poverelle, a poor beggar, and yet the most impressive figures of religious and world history will count. The highly intelligent, musically gifted son of a wealthy merchant spends a spoiled, carefree youth in luxury and abundance, unaffected by the religious, social and political tensions of his time. Only as a young man of about twenty, in a long inner struggle, does he radically change his mind and embark on the search for the path of perfect, Gospel-oriented Christ-following. His family distances himself from him, and by 1206 there is a final break. He is disinherited and says to himself of his father, because "from now on, only God in heaven is my father." In 1209, as the tradition has it, he finally makes his life decision in accordance with a vision of living in voluntary poverty as a traveling preacher. Francis preaches with simple, understandable words in the sense of the gospel love of God and neighbor, peace, voluntary renouncement, unpretentiousness, joy. His work is aimed at reconciliation and reconciliation in all spheres of life, at the peaceful implementation of more humanity. He claims nothing for himself, does not want to dominate anyone and has nothing. In all people, especially the despised people, the poor and the weak, the sick and the beggars along the way, he sees his brothers and sisters. In brotherhood he meets all the creatures of God, including nature. An impressive, even literarily highly significant testimony to this is the sun song, which he wrote as a seriously ill and half-blind man a year before his death. Attracted by his fascinating personality, his convincing speech and the ideal of voluntary poverty, Franz soon joined young people in the "perfect following of Christ"; From this small community of "lesser brothers," as they call themselves, a dynamic inner-church renewal and missionary movement quickly develops, to which already in 1223 almost 40,000 brothers belong. Franz, who, moreover, has never been ordained a priest but has remained a deacon for life, does not consider it his task to be at the head of a large religious community with fixed organizational structures; He therefore gives up the order and retires in his last years of life back to solitude. He dies on October 3, 1226. Already in 1228 he is canonized. Dante says of him that he has "risen to the world like a sun." The power of the hl. Francis of Assisi far beyond the denominations is unbroken. He is looked upon as a man of reconciliation, a respectful treatment of mankind and nature, an unprejudiced encounter with other cultures, and the inspirer of the Franciscan movement, which is still one of the strongest movements within the Catholic Church today. Pope John Paul II declared him patron of environmental protection in 1979. The 87th German Catholic Day, which takes place in Dusseldorf from 1 to 5 September 1982, with its motto "Turn around and believe - renew the world", also stands in unmistakable reference to the Franciscan Year of Remembrance. His central theme is "faith." Above all, he wants to explore the question of how Christians today can live and witness in this world, in society and in the state. Many thousands of Christians will take this opportunity to engage with the issues of the day, pray and celebrate together, and experience fellowship. (Text: Commissariat of German Bishops, Bonn)