Rome, from the General Curia, 29th June 2026
Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul
To all the Friars Minor of the Order,
and in a particular way to the brothers and the fraternities of the Provinces of Spain, Peru, Argentina, and of all the lands where the Apostle of South America passed, prayed, wept, and sowed the Gospel:
May the Lord give you peace!
On the 27th December 2026 we will recall the three hundredth anniversary of the canonisation of St Francis Solano, proclaimed a saint by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726, more than a century after his death in Lima on 14 July 1610. It is a memory that, in some Churches of Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Chile, remains alive and popular; while in other parts of the Order it seems to me a memory grown faint, which few among us would still know how to recount. With this letter, I would like to help us reclaim it. Not as a devotional debt, but as a gift that reaches us precisely in the year in which we celebrate the Eighth Centenary of the Pasch of Saint Francis of Assisi.
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