Originally published at Catholic News Agency
Catholics will remember St. Francis of Paola on April 2. The saint founded a religious order at a young age and sought to revive the practices of the earliest monks during a period of corruption in the Church.
Francis was born in the Southern Italian region of Calabria during 1416. His parents, who maintained a strong devotion to St. Francis of Assisi, named their son after him. The boy’s father and mother had little in the way of wealth, but they passed on a rich spiritual heritage to their son, with the hope that he would imitate his namesake.
The young Francis showed signs of a remarkable spiritual life, following his parents’ lead in accepting poverty as a path to holiness. When his father placed him in the care of a group of Franciscan friars to be educated at the age of 13, Francis made a personal decision to live strictly according to the rule of their religious order.
After a year with the friars, Francis rejoined his parents as they made a pilgrimage to Assisi, Rome, and the historic Franciscan church known as the Portiuncula. When the family returned to their hometown of Paola, Francis – at the age of
