Franciscans and the Church

Two weeks ago, Pope Leo XIV proclaimed the year 2026 as a Franciscan Jubilee Year, commemorating the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis. Through this Jubilee, and until January 10 of next year, the faithful can obtain the special grace of a Plenary Indulgence under the usual conditions — sacramental confession, Communion, and prayer for the intentions of the Pope — by making a pilgrimage to any Franciscan conventual church or place of worship dedicated to St. Francis anywhere in the world. In light of this, I wish to offer a brief excerpt of a reflection on the liturgical contributions of St. Francis and the Franciscans to the Church.

In the Franciscan tradition, liturgical prayer was always situated within a missionary horizon—ad gentes, to those who had not heard the Gospel, and equally as a force for the renewal of Catholic life within Christian societies through doctrinal preaching and the witness of a Gospel life of penance. The friars were to teach the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist not only through instruction but through outward signs of reverence and obedience to the liturgical law of their time. Their program of liturgical renewal often began with simple yet profound acts of reparation: cleaning, ordering, and restoring abandoned churches so that they might once again become fitting places of worship. Yet the heart of this renewal was not merely architectural renovation, but the faith and charity that transformed these spaces into living centers of prayer.

Behind St. Francis’s insistence on these matters was not aestheticism but a theological conviction that liturgical beauty is pedagogical. Pope Benedict XVI underscored this in his address to the Franciscans gathered in Assisi at the tomb of their Seraphic Patriarch: “Francis was a great teacher of the via pulchritudinis. May the Friars imitate him in radiating the beauty that saves; may they do so in particular in this stupendous Basilica, not only by means of the art treasures preserved here, but also and above all in the intensity and decorum of the liturgy and fervent proclamation of the Christian mystery.”