What's New at the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in San Francisco

A detail from a painting by Giovanni Cimabue, in the lower level of the Basilica at Assisi.

The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in San Francisco

What’s New?

The Renaissance Project

The Renaissance Project is an inspired plan to bring the Shrine to its true potential, in four phases, by creating:
• A replica of Saint Francis’ porziuncola chapel from Assisi, Italy, right next to the Shrine’s main Church.
• A welcoming piazza on Vallejo Street, featuring the renowned Benny Bufano statue of Saint Francis.
• A beautiful upgrading of the exterior and interior of the Church — a preservation of our national treasure.
• An international spiritual center with programs that express Franciscan prayer and thought.

Gay and Lesbian “Marriages”?

Between Man and Woman: Questions and Answers About Marriage and Same-Sex Unions
(From the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, November 2003.)

Gift Shop

As of 29 August 2003, after several months of image processing and HTML coding, the Franciscan Centre Gift Shop is now on-line. At present, orders may be placed by phone, by fax, and by mail. Some day we may be able to program a secure “shopping cart” on-line ordering system. And, remarkably enough, by the grace of God, all this is being—and has been—done with volunteer labor.

Statue of Saint Clare

A beautiful carved wood statue of Saint Clare has been donated to the National Shrine of Saint Francis. After considerable restoration work by an art conservation specialist, the statue made its appearance in the church on 11 August 2003—the Feast of Saint Clare. The specialist surmises that the statue was carved in Germany at least 80 years ago; its history is unknown.

Audio Clips

To increase your appreciation of Latin, we now have audio clips of Latin prayers on several pages. These clips are marked with the following icon:

Listen to the Latin

On the Rosary and Vespers pages a lector reads the texts; some day we might also have a cantor singing several pieces in simple tones of Gregorian chant.

Also, on the Musical Parts of the Mass page, we have 60 second audio clips of various parts of the Mass along with read text.

We have used .wav files because they can be easily played by most browsers. Each sound file, however, can take up to five minutes to download (on slower modems) before it can be played, so please be patient.

(If you are using Internet Explorer on Windows, it should have its own Sound Player; if you’re using Netscape, you may have to download Winamp; if you’re using a Mac, you may have to download SoundMachine.)