On Friday, the 3rd October 2025, in the Papal Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels, at the end of the celebration of First Vespers in the Transitus of St. Francis, the Minister General of the OFM, Br. Massimo Fusarelli, on behalf of all the Ministers General of the Franciscan Family, officially announced the VIII Centenary of the Transitus of St. Francis (1226-2026).
This is the culmination of the great Franciscan Jubilee journey that from 2023 to 2026 retraces the last blessed years of the life of the Poverello-Poor Man of Assisi. After the approval of the Bull Rule and the Christmas of Greccio (2023), the gift of the Stigmata (2024) and the composition of the Canticle of the Creatures (2025), the Franciscan Family is preparing to celebrate and relive the bodily death of our Seraphic Father, of which he himself had written - not surprisingly - in the last stanza of the Canticle: "Praised be you, my Lord, for our sister bodily death, from which no living man can escape".
"St. Francis teaches us that natural death, although always painful, is not an enemy to be feared, but a sister to be welcomed with a reconciled spirit," said Br. Massimo in his announcement. "Her death, welcomed as a sister and lived as a last act of faith and love, reminds us that every human existence has an eternal meaning", that every life is precious, but that in the Mystery of Christ "it finds new and definitive meaning".
The Minister General of the OFM addressed a thought to the present time, "still crossed by conflicts of all kinds, wars and even violations of fundamental human rights such as the right to exist", in which every person must feel called to make choices in favour of life, following the example of St Francis in turn inspired by the Gospel.
For this reason, the Centenary of the Transitus is presented as a powerful proclamation of life and hope, just as we are at the end of the Jubilee Year of Hope: in a sort of passing of the baton, St Francis' Transitus is not "a sunset, but a dawn: the dawn of a presence that for eight centuries has continued to illuminate the path of humanity according to the heart of God manifested in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus".
The official beginning of the Centenary will be celebrated in Assisi on the 10th January, 2026: all the sons and daughters of St. Francis, all people of good will, Christian and civil communities, young and old, the healthy and the sick, are invited to join this great Franciscan jubilee.