This year the Franciscan Family is celebrating the 800 years of the event of the stigmatisation of St. Francis on Mount La Verna in September 1224. This issue features a paper on the Stigmata of St. Francis and La Verna by Br. David Gagrčić OFM, Vicar of the Friary of La Verna, who was invited to deliver a conference to the Friars Minor of the Franciscan OFM Province of Malta on 14 February 2024 during an ongoing formation seminar. Another paper features La Verna as the inspiration for the mystical treatise Itinerarium mentis in Deum by St. Bonaventure, which is a meditation on the event of the stigmatisation as a paschal journey with Christ Crucified in six steps leading to ecstatic peace of the seventh day, symbolised by the Crucified Seraph that appeared to St. Francis. Another contribution is a short article on the document of authentication of a relic of the blood of St. Francis, venerated in the Franciscan OFM Church in Rabat, Malta. The last paper regards the religious establishment of Sant’Angelo di Panzo, outside Assisi, where St. Clare spent a short period at the beginning of her vocation, before transferring definitely to San Damiano.
Franciscan Studies 