Who is St. Francis of Assisi? Why did the Pope chose to go by his name?

Pope Francis honors St. Francis of Assisi's legacy of peace, poverty, and respect for creation in Assisi, Italy.

When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was anointed as the Pope, he chose to rename himself as Francis after St. Francis of Assisi, the medieval saint who founded the Franciscans, one of the largest orders in the Catholic Church.

St. Francis’ tomb is situated at the hilltop town on Assisi in Italy, where the saint was born here more than 840 years ago.

“The life of St. Francis teaches the way to holiness is giving up yourself, getting rid of things that hold us back in our life here, and just offer ourselves to the Lord,” said the Rev. Paul Vu, who was visiting in early March with a group of 50 Vietnamese-American parishioners from Santa Ana, California.

In 1182, St. Francis was born to a wealthy family in Assisi, which rises above a fertile valley in central Italy. Praying in front of a crucifix, he is said to have heard a call to reform the church. He aspired to strip everything down to the essentials in the service of God.

The Santuario della Spogliazione, which literally means stripping, is a sober stone church on the hillside. It marks the spot where he gave up even his clothes in front of his father, who disinherited him. St. Francis was accepted into the church by the bishop as an advocate of the poor and went on to found a religious order that’s still active globally today, the Franciscans.

For Assisi’s current bishop, the Rev. Domenico Sorrentino, St. Francis’ renunciation of material encumbrances also signaled his love of creation and of peace.

“Francis, stripping himself, came back to nature in some sense. So we must receive nature as a gift of God, and respect this gift,” Sorrentino told The Associated Press.