FRANCIS EMBRACING THE LEPER

CATECHETICAL SUNDAY: When Francis ministered to the poor and social outcasts of his time, he found that what used to be bitter had now turned to sweetness

During the year 1206, when he would have been 24, Francis of Assisi was undergoing a transformation. The image of Francis embracing a leper is representative of the inner conversion that was happening in his life.

Francis had decided to break his connection with his father and the work of being a cloth merchant. He was doing manual labor repairing an abandoned church in the woods outside of Assisi, begging for food, and living a somewhat solitary life of prayer and penance prior to attracting followers to join him.

Twenty years later near the end of his life in the fall of 1226, eight hundred years ago, Francis wrote a final testament to his many fellow friars describing the scene portrayed in the image for this year’s Catechetical Sunday on Sept. 20 (see page 11). “While I was in sin, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I had mercy upon them. And when I left them that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of soul and body.”

Lepers in the 13th century were not just afflicted with physical illness but were also social outcasts. They could not live within the city walls of Assisi or other medieval cities. They were not allowed to be with family and friends. They were exiled from the social world they had known. Many lived in hospices that were little more than holding pens where they were isolated from all but their fellow lepers. Being a leper meant living on the extreme margins of society. The reaction of Francis, his distaste for lepers, was the common view of most medieval people.

Early biographers of Francis tell of several events that led up to Francis’ conversion, but he singled out his experience with lepers as key to his transformation as he looked back on his formative years. What we see in the picture and what we know from Francis’ own words is that a major part of his embrace of the Gospel was turning toward not away from those whom others avoided. By doing that Francis was following in the path set out by his Lord.

We are told by St. Luke in the fourth chapter of his Gospel, that at the beginning of his public ministry Jesus returned to the town where he was raised and entered the synagogue in Nazareth. He was handed the scroll with the text of the prophet Isaiah, and he searched it for the passage where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . to bring good news to the poor” (Is 61:1). Luke recounts that Jesus after reading the text of Isaiah then announced that “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk 4:21).

As Jesus ministered to the poor and social outcasts of his time — tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, adulterers — so Francis of Assisi sought to do the same. And when he did so he found that what used to be bitter had now turned to sweetness. That is, Francis came to see that the poor of his day were not figures to be pitied or patronized; rather they were human beings of dignity and worth. Just as Jesus saw past the externalities of people and knew their inner hearts, so too Francis came to grasp the innate dignity of all God’s creatures despite their physical condition. Francis, post-conversion, could enjoy being among the poor, weak and marginal — they were a source of sweetness.

The image of Francis embracing the leper can remind us that opening ourselves to the poor and outcasts of our time is not to be thought of as a self-sacrificial burden that we put up with because we are disciples of the Lord. Rather, learning to embrace those we too instinctively marginalize can be a path that leads us to a richer and fuller experience of life. We are not bringing grace to those who lack it, but discovering the presence of God’s goodness in those our society too readily shuns.

Father Kenneth R. Himes, OFM, is professor emeritus at Boston College and Franciscan scholar in residence at Siena University. He is the author of “Sacred and Social” (Georgetown University Press, 2025).