Saint Francis: A Model for Human Liberation

by Leonardo Boff

Examines the applications of the thoughts of Saint Francis to problems of the modern world, such as the consumer-orientation of society, liberation from oppression, and divisions between rich and poor

Genres: Spirituality, Philosophy, Christianity, Religion

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 10, 1984

About the author

Leonardo Boff, born as Genézio Darci Boff, in Concórdia, Santa Catarina, Brazil, on the December 14, 1938. He is the grandson of Italian immigrants from the region of Veneto who came to Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in the final part of the nineteenth century. He received his primary and secondary education in Concórdia - Santa Catarina, Rio Negro - Paraná, and Agudos - São Paulo. He studied Philosophy in Curitiba - Paraná and Theology in Petrópolis - Rio de Janeiro. He joined the Order of the Franciscan Friars Minor in 1959 and received his doctorate in Philosophy and Theology from the University of Munich - Germany, in 1970.
For 22 years he was the professor of Systematic and Ecumenical Theology at the Franciscan Theological Institute in Petrópolis. He has served as a professor of Theology and Spirituality in various centers of higher learning and universities in Brazil and the rest of the world, in addition to being a visiting professor at the universities of Lisbon (Portugal), Salamanca (Spain), Harvard (United States), Basel (Switzerland), and Heidelberg (Germany).
He was present in the first reflections that sought to articulate indignance toward misery and marginalization with discourse, which later generated the Christian faith known as Liberation Theology. He has always been an ardent of the Human Rights cause, helping to formulate a new, Latin American perspective on Human Rights with, “Rights to Life and the ways to maintain them with dignity.”
He has received honorary doctorates, in Politics from the University of Turin (Italy) and in Theology for the University of Lund (Sweden). He has also been honored with various awards, within Brazil and the rest of the world, for his struggles on behalf of the weak, the oppressed and marginalized, and Human Rights.
From 1970 until 1985 he participated in the editorial council of Editora Vozes. During this time he participated in the coordination and publication of the collection, “Theology and Liberation” and the entire edition of the works of C. G. Jung. He was Editor-in-chief of “Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira” from 1970 to 1984, of “Revista de Cultura Vozes” from 1984 to 1992, and of “Revista Internacional Concilium” from 1970 to 1995.
In 1984, he was submitted to a process by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, former Holy Office, in the Vatican. This was due to his theses linked to liberation theology exposed in his book "Church: Charism and Power. In 1985 he was condemned to “obsequious silence” and was removed from his editorial functions and suspended from religious duties. Due to international pressure on the Vatican, the decision was repealed in 1986, allowing him to return to some of his previous activities.
In 1992, under renewed threats of a second punitive action by authorities in Rome, he renounced his activities as a priest and ‘promoted himself the state of laity.’ “I changed trenches to continue the same fight.” He continues as a liberation theologian, writer, professor, widely hear conference speaker in Brazil among other countries, also as an adviser of social movements of liberating popular matrix, as the Landless Movement and the Base Ecclesial Communities (CEBs), between others.
In 1993 he was selected as professor of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).
On December 8, 2001 he was honored with the alternative Nobel prize, “Right Livelihood Award” in Stockholm, Sweden.
He presently lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area on the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. He shares his life and dreams with the defender/educator of Human Rights from a new ecological paradigm, Marcia Maria Monteiro de Miranda. He has also become the “father by affinity” of a daughter and five sons, sharing the joys and sorrows of responsible parenthood. He lives, accompanies and recreates the unfolding of life in the “grandkids” Marina, Eduardo and Maira.

Reviews

[Georgiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

p. 34-35 "the whole universe surrounding Saint Francis is surrouded by infinite gentleness and of "the most gentel feeling of devotion toward all things"; "he felt as if transported by a heartfelt love by all creatures." Because of this, he walked with reverence over rocks, in considerations of the One who Himself is called Rock; he gathered the worms in the road so that they would not be stepped on by travelers; he provided the bees with honey and wine in the winter so that they would not perish from hunger and cold. Here is made clear a distinct way of being-in-the-world, not over things, but together with them, like brothers and sisters of the same family. To his own agonies and sufferings "he gave not the name of pains but of brothers." Death itself was for him a friend and a sister. Because of this, the Franciscan world is full of magic, of reverence of respect. It is not a dead and inanimate universe; things are not tossed here, within the reach of possessive appetites of hunger; nor are they placed one beside another. They are alive and have their own personality; they have blood ties with humanity; they live in the same Father's house as humanity."

p.35 "How did Saint Francis arrive at this intimate sympathy with all things? In the first place, because he was a great poet, not romantic but ontological, that is, a poet capable of capturing the transcendent and sacramental message that all things send out."

p. 36 "However, recourse to the poetic soul of Francis does not explain adequately the depth of his experience of being-with-things as brothers and sisters of the same household. At the root of it all, there is the religious experience of the universal fatherhood of God. The paternity of God was not for Francis a cold dogma and a conclusion of the rationalist as to the contingency of creatures. It was a profound emotional experience; it meant a cosmic identification with all the elements. The truth of the universal fatherhood of God is the nucleus of the message of Jesus."

p.37 "When he sings, he does it with all creatures, as is said in his wonderful "Canticle of Brother Sun." He does not sing alone through the creatures. It would be selfish to become deaf to the hymn that they themselves sing to the creator. He sings with them, with the cricket, and with the lark: "The sister larks praise their Creator. Let us go among them and sing ourselves to the Lord, reciting his praises and the canonical hours." Modern humanity has difficulty singing along with things because we are not with them. Because of this, we cannot hear their essential ballad."

p.38 The core of this effort at interiorization centered around the theme of poverty. Poverty, fundamentally, does not only consist in not having things, because individuals always have things: their body, their intelligence, their clothes, their being-in-the-world. Poverty is a way of being by which the individual lets things be what they are; one refuses to dominate them, subjugate them, and make them the objects of the will to power. One refuses to be over them in order to be with them. This demands an immense asceticism of the renunciation of the instict to power, to the dominion over things, and to the satisfaction of human desires. Poverty is the essential path of Saint Francis, realized in the physical place of the poor. The poorer he was, the freer and more fraternal he felt. Possession is what engenders the obstacles to communication between human beings themselves and between persons and things. Interests, selfishness, and exclusive possessions interfere between the individual and the world. They are placed at a distance and a well of alienating objectifications is sunk between them. The more radical the poverty, the closer the individual comes to reality, and the easier it is to commune with all things, respecting and reverencing their differences and distinctions. Universal fraternity is the result of the way-of-being-poor of St. Francis. He truly felt a brother because he could gather all things devoid of the interest in possessions, riches, and efficiency. Poverty is thus a synonym for humility; this is not another virtue, but an attitude by which the individual is on the ground, in the earth, at the side of all things. Converting oneself to this way of being, and in the measure of its realization, one is rewarded with the transparence of all things to the divine and transcendent reality. In this way, universal reconciliation and a cosmic democracy is achieved."

p.42 "His dark night was transformed into day, feeling already within the Kingdom of God, which is the symbol of total reconciliation, of the overcoming of all contradictions, and the greatest realization of humanity with the cosmos and with God."

p.52 [Definitions of poor:] "The poor are defined in terms of relationshiop, because there are no rich or poor in themselves. In an economic sense, poor(pauper) is in opposition to rich (dives); in a political sense, poor (minor, impotens) is opposed to powerful (potens, maior); in a hygienic sense,m poor (infirmus, esuriens, famelicus, vulneratus, debilis) is distinct from healthy (sanus); in a cultural sense, the poor are illiterate (imbecillis, simplex, idiota) as opposed to educated; and so on. As is evident, the concept of poor must be wide to adequately capture the phenomenon, which is multidimensional."

p.54 Within this structuring, the poor (at the same time Christian) find themselves below and at the margin. But they have never been forgotten. Essentiallky the strategy of the hierarchiacal Church is conditioned by the place of power that it occupies. The poor will almost always be seen, though with notable exceptions, from the perspective of the rich. And so the poor always seem inferior, in need, and the object of charitable activity. The politico-pastoral strategy will take the form of aid and paternalism. [...:] The cura pauperum found its formulation in two basic principles that summarize the assistive attitude of the entire ancient Church: first, the individual is to be considered solely as the administrator of the goods at hand, never as their owner, because only God is owner; second, the surplus of the rich is what is needed by the poor, and as a result, alms are a necessity of justice and not an expression of charity."

p.55 "The life of the poor is worth more than the property of the rich." [concerning the idea that "the starving man forced to rob is innocent":]<?

p.56 "With the advent of modern states, the charitable institution was not only reserved to the Church. Princes and kings themselves assumed the responsibility for attending the poor." [What is the reasoning of the reversal in the modern day?:]

p.56 With the industrical revolution and the breakdown of the medieval order, the problem of the poor took on a gravty it had not had before. One only needs to read the pages of Das Kapital by Marx about the historical origin of capital and the social cost demanded of the poor, submitted to every type of pressure and exploited by rising capitalism, soulless and fierce. With the acceleration of the production process within the forms of capitalism, the problem of the poor became worse on a worldwide level. The Church felt overcome in its ability to help."

p.57 The project of the base is not to make of Lazarus a guest at the table of the rich, but rather that in their situation they may earn their food. Because the Church failed in this, it ceased being a Church for the poor without becoming a Church with the poor, much less of the poor. [...:] It discovered primarily the value of teh poor, their ability to resist, the dignity of their struggle, their solidarity, their strenghth, associated with the gentleness for life and family, their ability to evangelize the entire church. In the midst of the, the Church was slowly changing its vision: instead of seeing the poor from the perspective of the rich, it began to see them with the eyes of the poor. From the very social place of the poor one can perceive the necessity for structural changes in society in the direction of a greater justice, communion, and participation.

[Alberto Lagomarsini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es una de las mejores exposiciones de la filosofía de vida De Francisco. Pero difiero sobre la Teología de la Liberación que incluye ya que como la inserta rompiendo con el devenir de la obra. Lo demás está bien explicado.

[Gladys Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una biografía del amor

[April Christine]

Learned more about Boff than Francis, but still a worthwhile read.