The popes great role model

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI (1181-1226) was the founder of the Franciscan Order. Born to the family of a wealthy nobleman, Francis allegedly heard a voice when he was in his 20s telling him to repair a ruined church. Absconding with a load of expensive colored drapery from his father’s shop, he sold it for gold and tried to give it to the church. Before that he told his father that he was no longer under his jurisdiction since he had devoted himself to God. He dedicated himself to “celibacy” and married “the Lady Poverty.” His “friars” took the three vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, and traveled two-by-two preaching and begging. The Catholic Encyclopedia says Francis saw a vision of the seraph angels and received “the stigmata” or visible wounds of Jesus in his own body.

Many stories are told in Catholic literature of Francis’ strange relationship with animals. On one occasion he pleaded with the people of a village to feed a wolf that had ravished their sheep, calling him “Brother Wolf.” On another occasion he preached to his “little brethren the birds.” Francis received the blessing of Pope Innocent III, the brutal founder of the Inquisition. The Franciscans and the Dominicans were appointed by one of Innocent’s successors, Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241), to head up the Inquisition, with papal authority to destroy Bible-believing Christians wherever they were found. They did a good job of it for half a millennium, developing a massive spy network (all citizens from about age fourteen and older throughout Catholic territories were sworn as spies of the inquisition and were required to reveal all offenders), capturing and imprisoning and impoverishing and torturing and burning men and women whose only crime was refusing to bow to the pope’s false doctrine.

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep`s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or gs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” (Mt 7:15-18).

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