LETTER OF OUR MINISTER GENERAL, CHRISTMAS 2025

To all the Friars Minor of the Order, the Contemplative Sisters of our Family, the TOR Sisters and to all brothers and sisters connected to our Order.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

May the Lord give you peace! As Christmas 2025 approaches, the Jubilee of Hope—which Pope Leo XIV will close on January 6, 2026—draws to its conclusion.

At the same time, we approach the commemoration of Francis’s blessed passing at the Porziuncola on October 3, 1226. I wish to share with you a word of hope born from contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation, as Francis lived it and passed it on to us.

Francis’ desire: to see and touch the gospel

His greatest desire was to live the Gospel. At Greccio, he wanted “to somehow see with his bodily eyes the hardships [our Lord] endured for lack of what a newborn needs; how he was laid in a manger and how he lay on the hay between the ox and the donkey”1 . He wanted to see how Jesus “was born for us along the way”2 , poor and naked, just as Francis himself wished to go “naked to meet the Lord”3 . Greccio and the ever-present memory of the Gospel—lived sine glossa through the Rule—opened the celebration of the Eighth Franciscan Centenary in 2023.

This memory was inscribed in Francis’s flesh through the Stigmata and opened him, by divine inspiration, to the beauty of that Canticle of praise through which he invited all creatures to acknowledge the Most High and good Lord, the source of all good.

In this Christmas 2025, illuminated by hope, the Centenary now opens toward that of Francis’s Passover, his encounter with death, whom he sang of as sister. Along this journey, Clare accompanied Francis with discretion and profound love: from the time Francis spent at San Damiano composing the Canticle of the Creatures and the Audite, Poverelle, to that final act of tenderness when Clare, together with her sisters, welcomed and kissed Francis’s wounded body as it was carried for burial. This was a gesture of care not only for his body but also to keep alive his memory.

Like Francis, Clare also sang the mystery of the Child born poor. In her Letters to Saint Agnes of Prague, she invites us to contemplate Jesus’s poverty: “Look attentively at the poverty of him who is placed in the manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes. O marvelous humility, O astonishing poverty! The King of angels, the Lord of heaven and earth, is laid in a manger.”4 Clare contemplates Mary, the “poor Virgin who gave birth to the Son of God lacking the things a child needs at birth and she invites us to follow “in the footsteps of the poor and humble Jesus Christ”5 , to become “contemptible in this world”6 as He became contemptible for us.

Dwelling in the living memory of Francis’ final years

The final years of Francis’ life conclude his earthly journey and hand it down to us as a contemporary narrative still capable of inspiring us. This Christmas reaches us with the richness of this memory and with an invitation to continue in our own lives the story of what the Lord did in Brother Francis and continues to do in us.

On January 10, 2026, as the Christmas season concludes, we will open as a Franciscan Family the Centenary of Francis’s blessed passing. We will do so together at the Porziuncola, where he himself chose to meet Sister Death, surrounded by his brothers, by Brother Jacopa, and by flocks of larks that accompanied his final flight.

A Christmas wish: a narrative of grace

The Christmas greeting I offer to all of you, dearest brothers and sisters, a message of hope.

I find inspiration for this in Francis’s Testament, written just as he approached his encounter with Sister Death. This text is like a precious treasure chest, containing Francis’ acknowledgment that God’s grace has been present all along, especially at the key turning points of his life: from his merciful encounter with lepers, to his encounter with the Church, to the gift of brothers, to the greeting of peace, to a life loved according to the Gospel.

I pray that this Christmas each of us will take time to reflect on the story of our lives, being written by the Lord God himself.

Remaining on the journey, especially in the company of the poor little ones and of so many men and women of good will, we find and contemplate the Lord dwelling among us, his presence within our flesh, transforming us into Him through the Spirit of the Lord.

Is this not Francis’ experience at La Verna with the stigmata, which we have also commemorated these years?

Letting Christmas be inscribed in our flesh

May Christmas be inscribed in our flesh and give us no rest, in the sense of reminding us of the center to which we must always return: Jesus Christ. In Him we stand as children before the Father’s face, animated by the Spirit! Without Christ as center, would not the story of the Poverello become incomprehensible and of no use to us?

Wishing you a blessed Christmas that enables you to touch and see once more the flesh of Jesus, from the mystery of his Incarnation to His healing encounters with others, and His tireless proclamation of forgiveness and peace.

May this Christmas be a time for us to cultivate peace through concrete actions, inspired by Francis, the man of reconciliation and hope, never tiring as we pray ceaselessly to be peacemakers.

Let us especially remember our brothers and their companions in the Holy Land, that place that providentially becomes the crossroads of so many human journeys, along with the people of the Ukraine, Eastern Congo, Myanmar, Haiti, and so many other lands tormented by conflict.  

I offer you my fraternal Christmas blessing, that you may joyfully celebrate the Lord’s Nativity filled with his peace as we pray and work for peace in our world, and as we prepare to open the centennial celebrations of Francis’ passing over to eternal life.

Your brother and servant,

Br. Massimo Fusarelli, OFM

1 Thomas of Celano, First Life, 84-87.

2 St. Francis, Office of the Passion, 15,7.  

3 Thomas of Celano, Second Life, 12.

4 Saint Clare, Fourth Letter to Saint Agnes of Prague, 19-21.  

5 Third Letter to Saint Agnes of Prague, 18.

6 Saint Clare, Second Letter to Saint Agnes of Prague, 19.