Cardinal Parolin urges the world to rediscover Saint Francis’s humility and joy as remedies for today’s consumerism and global unrest.
Newsroom (16/03/2026 Gaudium Press ) In the quiet splendor of the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, offered a message both timeless and urgent. Celebrating Mass on Sunday, March 15, during the extraordinary exposition of the saint’s relics, Parolin proposed Saint Francis as an “effective therapy” for a world overwhelmed by consumerism, anxiety, and conflict. The event marked the eighth centenary of the saint’s death, drawing pilgrims to the Umbrian town that still breathes his spirit of simplicity and universal fraternity.
Addressing the faithful gathered before the saint’s relics, Parolin described Saint Francis’s example as antidote to the modern age’s “run wild” hunger for possession, luxury, and waste. “Sobriety, the joy of small things, and feeling ourselves brothers of everyone and everything,” he said, are values capable of healing a humanity exhausted by excess. His words resonated deeply in a time of economic uncertainty, climate anxiety, and a world scarred by what he called “wars of all against all and against everything.”
The extraordinary relic exposition, open until March 22, offered the faithful a rare opportunity for contemplation. Yet it was Parolin’s reflection on the saint’s enduring relevance that gave the celebration its moral weight. He evoked an episode from the medieval Fioretti, when Friar Masseo asked Francis why crowds followed and obeyed him, despite his humble origins. Francis replied that God chose him precisely for his insignificance—a paradox that magnified his influence and inspired creative minds such as Giotto and Dante to enshrine his image and ideals.
Quoting early biographer Thomas of Celano, Parolin painted a portrait of Francis as gentle, serene, and prudent—faithful in all responsibilities, sober in living, and deeply contemplative. It is this rare balance of humanity and holiness, the cardinal suggested, that explains the saint’s enduring magnetism. His joy was “perfect,” his poverty “extreme,” and his fraternity universal—embracing not only people but all creation.
Parolin reminded the congregation that Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures was born amid personal illness and social darkness. Even then, the saint sang of the sun, the wind, and “sister death,” perceiving divine harmony in every element of existence. For Parolin, this vision of faith and joy amid suffering stands as a model for a present age in which the “darkness of war” still threatens to obscure hope.
Concluding his homily, the Italian prelate invited believers to ask God to illumine “the darkness of the heart,” granting humanity renewed faith, hope, charity, and humility. Returning to the spirituality of Assisi, he said, may be the only way to recover peace in a world “run wild” by overconsumption and inner turmoil. Eight centuries after Francis’s death, his call to joyful simplicity still echoes as both challenge and cure—a reminder that healing the world begins by healing the human soul.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from ACi Prensa
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