In 2026, on 4 October, the day dedicated to Saint Francis, became a national holiday. In Assisi the celebrations are entering their peak in these very days and the epicentre will be the Upper Basilica. At 23:59 on Saturday 3 October the bells will ring out in celebration, marking the start of the official ceremonies.
From this year, 4 October has once again become a national holiday to celebrate the universal values of peace, fraternity, solidarity and respect for the environment embodied by Saint Francis of Assisi.
On Sunday, the first national holiday dedicated to the saint, the ceremony will be attended by President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and ambassadors from all over the world because, as Euronews is told by Friar Giulio Cesareo, director of the Communications Office of the Sacred Convent of Assisi, “Francis is not a gift only for Italy but for the world”.
But who was Saint Francis and why does his appeal remain so powerful 800 years after his death?
Tradition has handed down several different images of Francis that in one way or another continue to engage with today’s world. As Professor Antonio Musarra, professor of Medieval History at Sapienza University in Rome and Harvard fellow who has recently published The world according to Francis of Assisi (Il Mulino, 2026) (source in Italian), explains to Euronews:
“Francis has been reread over the course of history in completely different ways. Already in his own time, in the 1200s, biographies and hagiographies accumulated that portray him differently, but the Francis we have today, the one we have inherited, is the one that begins to emerge after the First World War: he is Francis of peace, Francis of diplomacy, Francis who tries to reconcile the factions.”
And indeed, when we ask him how relevant the saint is and what he could teach the world today, the professor has no doubts: it is his modus operandi, his “style”. “A style that we see clearly in his relationship with the Mediterranean, with other cultures, with what is different,” the professor continues.
He offers two examples: “The different at home, for instance the leper from whom his conversion springs, but also the religious other, as when he met the sultan.” This meeting was the one that Giotto chose to include in the cycle on the life of Saint Francis with which, at the end of the 13th century, he frescoed the lower part of the single nave of Assisi’s Upper Basilica.
Why the meeting between Francis and Saladin’s nephew is so important
The encounter between Saint Francis of Assisi and the sultan of Egypt al-Malik al-Kamil took place during the Fifth Crusade in Damietta, Egypt. It is a meeting from which we can still learn today.
As Father Paolo Nicelli, lecturer in theology at the Catholic University of Milan and expert on the relationship between Islam and modernity, explains to Euronews: “Damietta is a port, a major commercial centre and therefore of interest to both Christians and Muslims, so the dispute is not spiritual but clearly of an economic and military nature.”
He goes on: “On one side we have Francis, a profoundly spiritual man, on the other we have a man of state, as is often the case in Islam.” Saint Francis is a man of faith and leaves the crusaders’ camp to cross enemy lines, convinced that he will succeed in converting Saladin’s nephew.
The conversion never came about, but Francis was received with respect by the sultan. Hagiographic tradition also tells of the legendary ‘ordeal of fire‘, in which Francis declared himself ready to walk into the flames together with Muslim clerics to demonstrate the truth of his faith. The sultan refused the challenge, but was impressed by the courage of the poor man of Assisi.
The meeting with a representative of Islam based on dialogue rather than weapons thus became in the following centuries a model of peace and interreligious dialogue.
“An example of mercy and forgiveness,” Nicelli adds. “A forgiveness that is even more necessary today, especially in a globalised society like ours. In this sense Francis’s model is certainly countercultural, because it goes directly against today’s dominant values: ambition, individualism, selfishness, self-centredness, self-glorification and so on.”
And perhaps this is why, 800 years after his death, his figure is still so celebrated and significant today.