SAN FRANCESCO VISTO DA ASSISI: Patrono dell’italianità, santo ecumenico, icona pacifista.

This paper examines the evolution of the political cult of Saint Francis from the post-WWII period to the 1980s, by focusing on the Sacred Convent of Assisi, in particular on the national celebrations of October 4 and the magazine «San Francesco patrono d’Italia». My investigation points out the dialectics between the national Catholic use and the pacifist reading of the saint. In the age of Pius xii, the cult remained marked by a clerical fascist legacy and manifested the objective of a Christian democracy with hierocratic and anti-communist boundaries. Then, the Council aggiornamento launched a reorientation towards the brotherhood of the peoples and ecumenical dialogue, making Francis a global pop icon. But it was necessary to wait for the Second Cold War climate and the end of the season of terrorism for the friars of the Sacred Convent to approach pacifist activism. That did not exclude again putting forward the Italianness of the Poverello, in order to reassert the country’s Christian roots and the church’s conditioning of the political agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]