St. Francis of Assisi died 800
years before October 4, 2026, assuming that the days dropped in adopting the
Gregorian calendar after his death have been incorporated in the calculation.
It seems that not only gravity affects time; changing calendars does too. As
time passes, how past heroes are viewed changes according to contemporary
circumstances and values. Painting of Jesus during the late Roman Empire depict
him as a young Roman, with short hair and clean-shaven. During the Middle Ages,
when beards and long hair were in style for men, Jesus too was depicted in such
terms as we recognize in modernity. Similarly, I contend that Russia’s ongoing
invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza and violence in the West Bank
framed the 800th death-anniversary of Francis in terms of peace and
diplomacy being salient in his mission. I contend that this emphasis unduly
relegates something more important to him: his strident stance against greed,
and even money itself as a symbol of avarice.
In a piece on the anniversary, Euronews reports on Francis having worked on behalf of diplomacy and peace to the extent that his explicit stance on greed and wealth (the two being tightly linked) is hardly mentioned.[1] This omission must be obvious to theologians. In 2026, the E.U. state of Italy made October 4th a state holiday in honor of the saint “to celebrate the universal values of peace, fraternity, solidarity, and respect for the environment embodied by Saint Francis of Assisi.”[2] No mention is made of Francis as a young man disavowing his family’s wealth because he believed that having accumulated money and being greedy are tightly linked. Other than Clement of Alexandria, the linkage was assumed by major Christian theologians in the patristic period—and this only began to change with Aquinas allowing for moderate profit (differing from Aristotle in making this move). Aquinas living amid Commercial Revolution has a lot to do with his novel stance).[3]
Euronews quotes Paolo Nicelli,
an expert on the relationship between Islam and modernity, who points to
Francis crossing enemy lines in one of the Fifth Crusade to engage in diplomacy
with the Egyptian sultan al-Malik al-Kamil. That Francis as “a model of peace
and interreligious dialogue” would be highlighted by Euronews in 2026 was not
lost on Nicelli, who said in 2026 of Francis’s “example of mercy and forgiveness,”
as in his crossing enemy lines in amity “is even more necessary today,
especially in a globalized society like ours.”[4] By globalized, people in 2026 would
doubtlessly think of the awareness the world over of Russia’s invasion and
Israel’s genocide. That context played a role in which of Francis’s stances was
emphasized.
To be sure, reaching out to,
and even compassionate acts for, enemies and even a person’s detractors
and rude people can be said to be the way into the kingdom of God depicted in
the Gospels. In fact, crossing enemy lines can be construed as the true meaning
of the symbol of the Cross, and the kingdom of God here and now as the proper
focus of Christianity itself.
Even so, the story of Francis commanding
a friar to retrieve a coin by mouth and place the coin on a pile of animal dung
to drive home the valuelessness of earthly wealth and its tight association
with the sin of avarice is entirely absent from the Euronews reporting on Francis’s
upcoming feast day. The closest that the reporters come is in quoting Nicelli
as claiming that Francis, as a diplomatic model “runs exactly against the
prevailing values of today: careerism, individualism, selfishness,
self-centeredness, and self-glorification and so on.”[5]
Careerism and selfishness are both closely related to greediness because greedy
people tend to be very motivated to “climb the corporate ladder” in order to earn
higher salaries and to be selfish due to their lack of concern for economic
benefits going to other people unless there is something financially in it for
the selfish person oneself. For example, a greedy person has no problem demanding
an exorbitant rent, much above what a residence is actually worth, even knowing
that the prospective tenant will struggle to pay so much. “That’s not my problem,”
such a lessor would think regarding such a lessee. The privileging of
money for oneself is reflected in an indifference toward whether other people benefit
financially. Hence, selfishness and greed are good friends, while greedy people
make awful friends.
In explicitly tying having a
sack of coins to greed, and therefore selfishness (and the related sin of
self-love), St Francis has been remembered as an extremely anti-wealth friar. Highlighting
his anti-war stance pales in comparison, yet in the context of military invasion
and genocide, the recessive role can easily become the dominant characteristic.
To be sure, financial interest often is not irrelevant to waging war. It is no
accident, for example, that the U.S. Government purchased bombs from American
companies (in what President Eisenhauer coined as the military industrial
complex) while being allied with Israel as it was conducting a genocide. Also,
as Nicelli observes in regard to the dispute between Christians and Muslims in
Francis’s day over Damietta, the fact that the city was “a major commercial hub
. . . so the dispute is not spiritual but clearly of an economic and
military nature” supports the contention that greed is more fundamental than war,
which is not to say that greed is behind all warfare.[6]
What is remembered from the past has perhaps as much to do with a contemporary
context than with the actual history. History may say more about us than itself.
Perhaps by recalling Francis’s strong anti-wealth position—that having
accumulated earnings is itself indicative of being greedy—the subterranean financial
interests behind contemporary military aggression can be rendered more
transparent.
2. Ibid.
3. See my texts in note 1 above. Francis would not doubt point out to you that in citing my own texts, a financial motive probably lurks under the surface. That assumes that people would rush out en masse to buy my books, which is as likely as hell freezing over.
4. Fanuel Morelli and Celilla Ghezzi, “Assisi Marks 800 Years Since St Francis’s Death and Remains a Symbol of Peace and Dialogue,” Euronews.com, 2 October 2026.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid, italics on “economic” being added.
