The words of The Intelligent Face of Fascism (Gianfranco Fini), have sent this secular Monkey, not without a certain amount of indignation, scrambling towards the Catholic Encylopedia. TIFOF, speaking at the annual celebration of the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, in Assisi, the city of Peace, took the opportunity to take back the symbol of St. Francis from the grubby hands of the pacifists.
“As with poverty, peace for him was a means rather than an end, and a means at the service of the common good. The proof of this is the fact that he never condemned legitimate defense, of either the individual or the community”[1]TIFOF trumpeted while around him various Franciscan monks shifted uncomfortably.
Indeed, the “famous third rule” of the Fransican Order, issued in 1228 states “The brothers will not carry armes, except for the defence of the Roman Church, the Christian Faith, or their lands, or with the permission of their Superiors”.
The problem with TIFOF’s astute analysis, though, as author Chiara Frugoni points out in today’s editon of La Repubblica, is that it’s based on a document that “has nothing to do with St. Francis…In 1228 the Saint had been dead for two years”. A minor oversight. In fact, as Frugoni, the author of an authoratitive work on the life of St. Francis, points out “In none of the rules from St. Francis, either with or without Papal imprinture, did he ever talk about arms”. Still, as we’ve seen from the States, it’s the searching for arms that’s important rather than the finding of them.
Obviously TIFOF’s remarks have caused widespread controversy and discussion. This Monkey sides partially with Director Franco Zeffirelli, who, as pompously as ever, lost his patience with the whole debate as to whether St. Francis would wave the rainbow coloured flag of Pace or would join AN’s brand of “Pacifiers”. Frankly he opined “it’s vulgar to attempt to place St. Francis in a current political context”.
Why then would the ever reserved leader of Alleanza Nazionale pursue such a vulgarity? Well, having clarified, erroneously, that St. Francis would have reached for the nearest sword in order to protect the Christian faith, he continued “This just definition of ‘Peace’ is ever more important in the present day, bloodied by every type of conflict, in which liberty and security must be defended, by those in uniform, for the greater good”.[3]
Last word on the matter goes to Italian Nobel prize winner Dario Fo, who said that, given Fini’s vision of St. Francis, when the famous encounter of Francis and the wolf of Gubbio occured, rather than calling to “Brother Wolf” to lay down by his side, Francis (the Pacifier) would have defensively slain the beast…
[1]”anche la pace era da lui desiderata come un mezzo, non come un fine, e come un mezzo al servizio del bene comune. Lo riprova il fatto ch