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With a foreword by Jon M. Sweeney
The 40th anniversary edition of an Orbis classic—Francis of Assisi’s spirituality and life explained in an inimitable voice that could only be his own, except that it was Carlo Carretto’s.
“I was born in Assisi, in Italy, eight hundred years ago. And eight centuries later I still remember a thing or two…. Thanks to my father’s money and my mother’s good taste I passed my childhood like the classic spoiled child. . . . Middle class rich boy that I was, I never would have thought that it would be the poor who would be my salvation . . .”
A fictionalized first person depiction of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, the beloved founder of the Franciscans and patron of the environment. The book reflects on Saint Francis’s youth, teachings, and the development of his religious order from the intimacy of an autobiographical narrative. Charming and original, I, Francis gives readers new insights and inspires renewed reverence for the “little poor man.”
Carlo Carretto was a leader of Catholic Action in Italy and served as National President of Catholic Youth from 1946 to 1952. At the age of 44 he heard the call of God to go into the desert and joined the Little Brothers of Jesus of Charles de Foucauld in the Sahara. He continued writing up until his death in 1988. His other books include Letters from the Desert.
