http://www.ici.net/cust_pages/panther/francis/
This website gives a virtual reality tour of the Basilica of San Francesco
before the earthquake, including the frescoed vault by the young Giotto of
the Four Doctors of the Church, including that of St Jerome which crashed to
the ground in the second of the many recent Umbrian earthquakes, killing
four people in the resulting rubble, two of them Franciscans. Also lost is
the Cimabue St Matthew, but that is not shown. Click on the Crucifix that
spoke to St Francis in the ruins of San Damiano, ('Francis, repair my church
it is all falling in ruins'), the Nativity at Greccio (where Francis, never
a priest, is garbed as a deacon), and the Poor Clares greeting the body of
St. Francis, of the thumbnails from the Upper Basilica. The Clarissans are,
or were, sleeping in tents following the earthquake. The Website gives
further information about Umbria and the earthquakes while downplaying the
damage, for it needs tourism. Read especially the letter from the Minister
General of the O.F.M.C., for updated information on where to send funds to
aid in restoration work. Again, please encourage the Franciscans to use
these funds also for the homeless and despairing laity, in Francis' and
Christ's way.
Tonight, the third night in a row, is a blusteringly cold gale, and many in
St Francis' Umbria are still sleeping in tents, their homes, built of stone,
needing to be demolished for safety reasons.
I can't afford to surf, Vow of Poverty, but this URL comes to me, and to
you, by way of a hermit Godfriend on the American West Coast. What a brave
new world the Internet is, a global village.
____
Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family
via del Partigiano 16, Montebeni, 50014 FIESOLE, ITALY
[log in to unmask]
http://members.aol.com/juliansite/Juliansite.htm
He said not, 'Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou
shalt not be diseased.' But he said, 'Thou shalt not be overcome'.
Julian of Norwich, Showings, Sloane 2499 Manuscript, fol. 49.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|