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Story summary
- Italy displayed St. Francis of Assisi’s relics to mark 800 years since his death on October 3, 1226.
- Pope Gregory IX canonized Francis on July 16, 1228, boosting his fame across Europe.
- Pope John Paul II named Francis the patron saint of ecology in 1979.
- Pope Francis issued the 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, linking environmental destruction to human suffering.
- Scholars say Mussolini’s fascist regime repurposed Francis’s stigmata as heroic sacrifice symbols for propaganda.
