Our Lord said to St. Francis of Assisi, “Rebuild My Church!”
May our new pope do the same!

Learning about St. Francis of Assisi

Pope Francis! What a wonderful name!! After the seagull found its hangout spot on the Sistine Chapel smokestack we should have guessed that our new pope would choose a name that was associated with a saint who had many feathered friends!

Because our new pope chose such a wonderful saint as his namesake, I thought I should give my kids a refresher on St. Francis of Assisi. I read the chapter about St. Francis from our book Around the Year Once Upon a Time Saints. (This is a cute, easy to read book, which I highly recommend.) When I got to the part about St. Francis rebuilding the Church I had to chuckle!
It read:
“But that night, he (the pope) had a dream. He saw the great Church of St. John Lateran falling, crumbling into dust, and only one ragged little man was holding it up. It was Francis. Our Lord said to the pope, “This is the man through whom the church shall be rebuilt.””

I thought, what could be better than someone who can rebuild our church! We are in such difficult times. Catholics are so confused and need direction. Could this new pope be the man who can bring the Church back to her former glory?  Oh, I hope so!  Pope Francis has a hard job ahead of him, and he is in need of many prayers. We all need to pray for him!

St. Francis of Assisi Craft
After reading the story about St. Francis of Assisi my kids made this craft,
 in honor of our new pope, Pope Francis.

All you need is:

  • the printable on our Download Shop (stock paper is best)
  • building material like:
    -brown or red paper square “bricks”
    -wooden craft sticks, cut in half
    -toothpicks
    -mini rocks
  • scissors (and cutters if you are using sticks)
  • glue (we used Tacky white glue)
 It is super simple and fun! Just print out the St. Francis and church printable and glue your “building material” around the image of  St. Francis.

Feel free to be creative about what “building material” you will use!

Choose the 6 small printable templates or the 2 larger templates.
CLICK HERE to download from our site.

May God shower Pope Francis with His Grace and help him to rebuild our Church!
~Jen-Marie

8 Comments

  1. Love this idea Jennifer! How do you find the time to not only think of such wonderful ideas, but then have time to actually follow through with all your creativity! I'm inspired and in awe! Thank you and hope to try this with my kiddos! Pinning!

  2. Love this idea. My son's favorite saint is Saint Francis. This would be wonderful to make and hand in his room. Thanks for sharing.

  3. Thank you for sharing. I was actually reading the story of St. Francis of Assisi from Around the Year Once Upon a Time Saints to my second grade son this past week. I look forward to doing this craft with him and some of his siblings.

  4. I love all these crafts. I wish I was a kif at your house. Thx for sharing then with us.

  6. BTW, did you now that the scientific name of some seagulls is Larus argentatus… both the bird name and the home country of the pope come from the latin name for silver… 🙂

  7. Hi Jennifer, your creativeness knows no bounds! You must have such fun creating. Thank you for sharing your talents with us! May God bless you and your family!

  8. I am enjoying my visit to your blog! You are so creative! I am going to pin some of your ideas so many more can come and find you! Yes our new Pope is a wonderful man and I think there will be many more surprises in store for us! God bless you! dove Patsy from HeARTworks

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