Learning to love St Frances

Assisi was always going to be a challenge. Yes, it's an exquisite Umbrian hill-town with ancient buildings and excellent restaurants, but it's also the centre of the world-wide Franciscan movement. Those who know me well will understand that I have difficulties with this tradition: all that anarchic free-spirit stuff tends to get irritating when you're trying to get things done.The opening night of the conference looked as if all my prejudices were going to be confirmed. We sang 'Make me  a channel of your peace' (never  good sign) and just as the service of compline finished there was a raucous sound and a band of musicians in medieval costume strode in. Up popped a Franciscan friar and annouced that we were having a party - and we were all led into the bar by bagpipes, trombone and tambourine. 'Here we go' I thought.

But then we began to spend time in the ancient part of Assisi: we had a guided a tour of the great basilica  from an American Franciscan who was in turn informative, funny and tearful as he recounted the story of St Francis and his ministry. The great basilica, now restored after the earthquake of 1997 and with the Giotto frescos back in view, was built in the two years after Francis' death, hundreds of stone masons giving their labour out of love and respect. Beneath the gothic upper basilica is the lower, darker and more mysterious romanesque church and underneath them both the tomb of St Francis, excavated in the nineteenth century. I can only say that, in spite of the inevitable tourist trappings there was a genuine sense of the holy, of having (in TS Eliot's words) knelt where prayer has been valid.

Then, this morning, we had our prayers in the basilica dedicated to St Clare, Chiara in Italian (the same as the word for 'light'). We heard of her struggle to develop a new form of monastic life, of her strength of character and her wise and eloquent counsel. In a side chapel hangs the Croce Damiano. This is the painted cross that (so Francis firmly believed) spoke to him with the voice of Christ and commanded him to restore the church. It still has a powerful presence.