On the 10th January, 2026, in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels in Porziuncola, at 10.00 a.m., the celebrations of the VIII Centenary of the Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi will begin, the last stage of the journey undertaken in 2023 and which made us relive the last years of the Poor Man's earthly life.
The Ministers General of the Franciscan Family will be present: Br. Massimo Fusarelli OFM, Br. Carlos Alberto Trovarelli OFMConv, Br. Roberto Genuin OFMCap, Tibor Kauser OFS, together with Br. Amando Trujillo Cano and Sr. Daisy Kalamparamban, respectively Minister General of the Third Order Regular (TOR) and President of the International Franciscan Conference of the Brothers and Sisters of the Third Order Regular. A choral presence to symbolise the charismatic richness of the Franciscan Family in the world.
There will be no shortage of local religious and civil authorities, including Msgr. Domenico Sorrentino, Bishop of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino and Foligno, and Valter Stoppini, Mayor of the city of Assisi: they will be involved in a gesture that will bring to mind the reconciliation between the bishop and the Podestà of Assisi, sung by St Francis as a prophecy of peace.
The rite will be divided into different moments, to testify to the richness of the Franciscan charism and the symbolic passage from the Centenary of the Stigmata to that of the Transitus. For the occasion, the oldest painting depicting St. Francis of Assisi preserved at the Porziuncola Museum will be exhibited in the basilica: the work of the so-called Master of St. Francis (mid-thirteenth century) depicts the Saint with the stigmata clearly visible, an expression of his full and definitive conformatio Christi. The image would have been executed on a wooden plank used to accommodate and protect the body of Francis immediately after his death, giving it a value that is not only iconographic, but also profoundly reliquary and testimonial.
The Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels houses the so-called Chapel of the Transitus, the place where St Francis, on his deathbed, wanted to be placed on the 3rd October, 1226. The last stanzas of the Canticle of the Creatures, "Praised be you, my Lord, through our sister bodily death, from which no living man can escape", is the authentic key to understanding this Centenary.
The celebration will be streamed live on the website of the Franciscan Centenarians www.centenarifrancescani.org.
Many initiatives of the Franciscan Family are already scheduled to celebrate this Centenary:
“St Francis has your eyes”: an itinerary of 12 monthly appointments organised by the Seraphic Province of the Friars Minor of Umbria and Sardinia to (re)find in the gaze of the Saint the key to orient ourselves in the complexity of our time. It starts on the 3rd January with the theme “St Francis and the word of God”. For info click here.
Read more about the 2023-2026 Centenaries
Read more about the Centenary of the Transitus