On July 27, 2023, Friars Guglielmo SPIRITO and Emanuele RIMOLI brought relics of the body of St. Francis of Assisi to Trani, Italy. It was the first time that relics of St. Francis had ever left the Sacred Convent to attend the feast day of another patron saint.
The feast day was dedicated to St. Nicholas the Pilgrim, Patron Saint of Trani. St. Nicholas was a young man from Greece who lived in the eleventh century. He practiced a form of praying from the heart which involved him constantly repeating the phrase Kyrie eleison. He was canonized in the Roman Catholic Church In 1099. Only last year, at the behest of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan for Italy, St. Nicholas and all the other Italo-Greek saints of southern Italy were recognized as saints by the Greek Church of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Therefore, with this happy coincidence, the visit of the relics of St. Francis to Trani became, in a way, a truly unique event―the Patron Saint of all Italy visiting the Patron Saint of Trani.
Friar Guglielmo SPIRITO
