Post #5628

SAINT FRANCIS OF PAOLA, CONFESSOR Francis, was born the 27th of March 1416 from humble conditions in Paola, a village in Calabria; and his parents, without children for long time, they obtained him, after a vow, by intercession of St. Francis of Assisi. Inflamed since adolescence by a divine ardour, in 1429 he retired in a hermitage, where for six years he conducted a harsh life, but made sweet by heavenly meditations. But since the hunger of his virtues were spreading far away and many flocked to him desired to serve God, the fraternal charity decided him to leave the solitude and, in 1436, to edify a church near Paola, where he threw the first foundations of his Order, praised and approved by the popes Paul II and Sixtus IV.