Lover of Truth
It is good to remember that above all St. Francis was a lover of the Truth, Jesus Christ. Peace is not the absence of conflict but rather the pursuit of solidarity with the truth, a relationship, which binds all souls, and is written on the heart by God. We must build on this shared foundation as we repulse evil, in our brother, in our neighbor, and in ourselves. All else is false peace.
St. Francis and the Sultan: Truth Without Compromise
St. Francis’ journey to Egypt to confront Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil, a nephew of Saladin, during the Fifth Crusade is the clearest example of his missionary understanding of peace in action.
In 1219, during the siege of Damietta, Francis crossed the battle lines with Brother Illuminato for one purpose: to preach Christ to the Sultan. Soldiers seized and roughed up the two friars before bringing them before al-Kamil himself, who received them with surprising courtesy and listened to Francis preach the Gospel for several days. Francis did not soften what he proclaimed, and later legend even has him offering to walk through fire to demonstrate the truth of the Faith — a colorful detail added by later biographers rather than the earliest eyewitness accounts, though it captures something true about his fearless witness. The Sultan did not convert and the war went on, but he sent Francis back to the Christian camp under safe conduct, along with a gift — traditionally an ivory horn, still kept today as a relic at the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. That respect bore lasting, concrete fruit: al-Kamil granted Francis and his brothers permission to visit the Christian holy places freely, a grace that grew over the following century into the Franciscans’ permanent custody of the Holy Land, which the Church still entrusts to the Order today.
Pope Francis pointed to this same meeting in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, calling it an example of an “openness of heart, which knew no bounds and transcended differences of origin, nationality, colour or religion.” He notes that Francis went to the Sultan following his own instruction to the friars in the Rule of St. Francis that, even “among the Saracens and other nonbelievers,” they were to go “without renouncing their own identity.”
Peace Through Truth, Not Indifference
That last phrase matters. St. Francis did not go to Egypt to suggest that every religion is simply another path to the same place, and Rome does not read his witness that way either. He crossed enemy lines specifically to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Truth, at real risk to his own life, and he was received with respect precisely because that witness was sincere rather than watered down. Real peace, as the Sultan and the friar showed each other for a few days in a war camp in Egypt, is not built by pretending our differences don’t exist. It’s built the way Francis built it — by holding the truth without compromise, and offering it to another soul in charity rather than in force.
“Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” Jn. 18:37
Peace is a relationship. Invest in the love of Truth and peace will flourish.