{"id":101539,"date":"2026-07-27T12:50:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T10:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/sicilia-una-visita-francescana-dellarcivescovo-di-palermo-alla-comunita-di-san-francesco\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T12:52:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T10:52:26","slug":"sicilia-una-visita-francescana-dellarcivescovo-di-palermo-alla-comunita-di-san-francesco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/sicilia-una-visita-francescana-dellarcivescovo-di-palermo-alla-comunita-di-san-francesco\/","title":{"rendered":"Sicily: Archbishop of Palermo Makes Franciscan Visit to the Community of St. Francis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The 800<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi inspired the Most Reverend Corrado&nbsp;LOREFICE, Archbishop of&nbsp;Palermo, Sicily, to make a fraternal and friendly visit to the friars of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Palermo. The visit took place on July 8, 2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This was not a canonical visitation, but rather a&nbsp;fraternal moment of&nbsp;encounter among brothers, in the simple style and tradition of St. Francis. In the Earlier Rule, Francis exhorts his friars to receive with kindness whoever comes to them (cf. <em>Earlier Rule<\/em> VII; FF 26).<br \/>\nArchbishop LOREFICE arrived&nbsp;without formality, dressed&nbsp;simply in short&nbsp;sleeves and wearing&nbsp;a wooden cross&nbsp;pendant. He came&nbsp;with a sincere&nbsp;desire to be&nbsp;among the sons&nbsp;of St. Francis, sharing moments of&nbsp;prayer, fraternity, and&nbsp;the joyful simplicity&nbsp;of Franciscan life. Those welcoming the Archbishop included the Minister Provincial of the Italian Province of the Immaculate Conception (Sicily-Calabria), Friar Salvino M. PULIZZOTTO; the local Pastor, Friar Jacek PINKOSZ; the eight friars of the community; and five young men in formation. The Archbishop took time to greet each friar personally, offering words of encouragement, a warm smile, and a fatherly expression of friendship and fraternal communion.<br \/>\nAfter presiding over Evening&nbsp;Prayer the&nbsp;Archbishop joined the&nbsp;community&nbsp;for a simple, modest dinner in&nbsp;the refectory. True&nbsp;to Franciscan&nbsp;tradition, the meal&nbsp;centered on the&nbsp;joy of being&nbsp;together and on&nbsp;the&nbsp;table as a&nbsp;place of fellowship, where food and fraternal conversation are shared.<br \/>\nAfter dinner, the&nbsp;group gathered on&nbsp;the terrace for&nbsp;an informal conversation&nbsp;focused on life&nbsp;experiences.&nbsp;There, the friars encountered an archbishop who was both a shepherd and&nbsp;a man as he recounted his life, his struggles, and his joys. He opened his&nbsp;heart, sharing the&nbsp;ups and downs&nbsp;of a pastoral&nbsp;journey that is&nbsp;often demanding\u2014marked&nbsp;by service in&nbsp;a city facing&nbsp;deep-rooted challenges, yet open to&nbsp;a future filled&nbsp;with hope and&nbsp;committed to a&nbsp;path&nbsp;of genuine and&nbsp;constructive renewal.<br \/>\nHe strongly emphasized&nbsp;that we live in an age dominated by the \u201cself\u201d\u2014 an&nbsp;\u201dI\u201d&nbsp;that becomes destructive&nbsp;when it places&nbsp;itself at the&nbsp;center of everything, even within Christian&nbsp;communities and consecrated life.<br \/>\nDon Corrado\u2014as the Archbishop prefers to be called\u2014after sharing his personal relationship with God, listened to the friars, particularly the Minister Provincial, Friar Salvino, who described the life and activities of this community, which serves in a distinctive area of Palermo. Friar Salvino also talked about the journey of the Province of Calabria-Sicily, whose current vocational&nbsp;prospects offer encouraging&nbsp;signs for the&nbsp;future.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Friar Paolo FIASCONARO and Davide ROMANO (pre-postulant)<\/p>\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi inspired the Most Reverend Corrado&nbsp;LOREFICE, Archbishop of&nbsp;Palermo, Sicily, to make a fraternal and friendly visit to the friars of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Palermo. The visit took place on July 8, 2026. This was not a canonical visitation, but rather [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,117,148],"tags":[934,2049],"class_list":["post-101539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-federations","category-fimp-en","category-news","tag-sicily","tag-visit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101543,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101539\/revisions\/101543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ofmconv.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}