Feast day: April 2

St. Francis of Paola

Hermit, Founder · 1416–1507

Patron of Mariners, boatmen

An Italian hermit whose austere followers became the Order of Minims — 'the least' — and who was famous for miracles, prophecy, and blunt counsel to kings.

Francis was born in 1416 at Paola in Calabria, in the far south of Italy, to poor and devout parents who had prayed to St. Francis of Assisi for a child. As a boy he spent a year with the Franciscans, then, drawn to solitude, withdrew at about fifteen to live as a hermit in a cave by the sea near his hometown.

Disciples gradually gathered around him, and from this beginning grew a new religious order, the Minims — the name, meaning 'the least,' chosen to express their humility. To the usual vows they added a fourth, of perpetual Lenten abstinence, never eating meat or other animal products. Francis himself was famous for his austerity, his miracles, and his blunt honesty before the powerful.

Many legends surround him, the most famous being that, refused passage across the Strait of Messina, he spread his cloak on the water and sailed across on it — the origin of his patronage of mariners and boatmen. So great was his reputation for holiness that the dying King Louis XI of France summoned him, hoping to be cured; Francis went, and though he could not give the king the long life he craved, he helped him to die well.

He remained in France at the court's insistence and died there at Plessis in 1507, aged ninety-one. He was canonized in 1519.

Tradition says that, refused passage across the Strait of Messina, he spread his cloak on the water and sailed across on it — hence his patronage of sailors.

Image: Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/06231a.htm