28 October 2024–Assisi, and Tour at an Unexpected Place: We visited Assisi already, you say! Yes, we did. Last Saturday. AND…after we had already returned, we learned about things at Assisi that we had not known about and therefore not seen. Thus, we set off on an extremely beautiful fall day in Umbria to see Assisi once again. We stopped at Santa Maria Maggiore in Assisi. This means that it is near the Basilica of St. Francis, but it is a totally different church in that same village. One must remember that “near” is a relative term. When talking about mountains and the fact that parking and driving is forbidden in the middle of town center, the distance takes some time on foot. The roads are cobblestone, with some steep uphill and downhill climbs. Nevertheless, Santa Maria Maggiore used to be the main Church of Assisi. Now, it no longer is. However, it is very often visited by people around the world. Why? Aside from the medieval beauty of this Church, there is a very important and influential person’s body therein, the body of Beatified Carlo Acutis. Carlo Acutis has been beatified, which means that he is on his way to sainthood. That also means that therefore, his body has been exhumed from his burial site and exposed in a glass sarcophagus in this Church. Carlo Acutis was also only 15 years old when he died. When one views his body, he is dressed in a sweatsuit (zipped sweatshirt with the #58 on the sleeve and something North in white lettering on the chest. He is wearing blue jeans and Nike gym shoes. He has a beautiful head of brown curly/wavy hair. He looks as if he is sleeping. His story is phenomenal, and I recommend that one Google it. It is phenomenal in its simplicity and common-person-nesss. He never received a stigmata, he was only 15, so he had not accomplished any major work, really, he was a technology geek, and he loved the Eucharist, and St. Francis of Assisi, as well as a handful of other saints. He is a regular kid who somehow made it to sainthood. And, yes, he technically already is a saint. The special group in the Catholic Church who is responsible for declaration of saints has already given its approval for Carlo Acutis to be advanced from Beatified to Saint, but the actual date of declaration by Pope Francis and celebration has not yet been announced! How awesome is that!!!??? In that same Church, there is a small section where the sign reads that it was there that Francis took off his clothes marking him as a rich person (his family had been quite wealthy) and declared his commitment to poverty instead. This is called the”Santuario della Spogliazione.” Just nearby is a powerful statue of St. Francis of Assisi’s parents. His mother is holding a broken chain. The significance is that in spite of her and her husband’s disappointment and anger that their son, Francis, would not only renounce the inheritance of wealth but also the father’s insistence on passing on and Francis receiving the family’s wealth of material things, the mother finally broke down and let Francis free, to break their imposed bond of family ties/ties to family wealth, so that Francis could pursue what he believed to have been his personal faith-driven goals. Still close to these sites and still in Assisi is the Chhiesa Nuova, one can see a statue of a young St. Francis on his knees inside a very small concrete room. He appears to have been beaten (his face). That is because this scene recalls the space where Francis’ father, angered at his son’s rejection of wealth and also of his earthly father’s imposed life direction, beat him and jailed him. I visited the house where St. Francis was born, as well as a teeny-tiny Church called Oratorio di San Francesco Piccolino. Finally, I wanted to see the. Basilica of San Francesco’s Chiesa Maggiore. I had attended Mass in the Chiesa Inferiore last Saturday evening, and I had never gone to the upper Church at all. Today, I climbed about 50 concrete steps to be able to see frescos by Giotto on the walls of this segment of the Basilica. After making it to the top, I found out that I could not enter the Chiesa Maggiore from that point of the structure. I needed to go back down and enter that Church only through the Chiesa Inferiore. Uggh! But I did as I was told—and I took no photos as I was told. Giotto had painted 28 frescos of the life of St. Francis. Each one is phenomenal. The church, itself, is absolutely beautiful! So, mission accomplished for today. Due to the time change and the late, slow start, daylight was beginning to wane, but not before I caught a fantastic sunset photo. I’ve been saying “I” this past week because Dad has not felt well since a week ago Saturday evening. Symptoms mimicked those of gastroenteritis, but there were other symptoms that we had been attempting to resolve in various ways, such as taking the advice of pharmacists, our family doc in the U.S. via text, and even the advice of a video-chat with a doc from Rome. Somehow, though, the symptoms were not going away. Today, they were so bad once again, and once again, Dad drove me to Assisi but could not walk about for any length of time/distance, and he spent his time in the car. We figured it was time to go to the ER. We ended up going to Pronto Soccorso (ER) in the Nuevo Ospedale di San Giovanni Battista in Foligno (about a half-hour drive from our B&B). Dad drove there because he felt OK enough to do so, and, after about four-to-six hours, the doc decided that he needed to be admitted. By this time, they found that his kidneys, liver, and perhaps even his heart had begun to “suffer” likely from the prolonged symptoms, that he needed to be stabilized and made comfortable, and that the cause needed to be identified in order to choose an appropriate and effective treatment plan. So, our unexpected tour of Italy today was also composed of experiencing the hospital system here. (I realize that we cannot generalize. We can only comment about our own experience and this particular hospital and at this particular point in time). What I can say is that from start to finish, we were treated well. The hospital facility and staff were different from those we have experienced in the U.S. But, that does not make it better or worse because one thing that this hospital does right, in my opinion, is that it never turns anyone away. Italian people do not pay, I understand, because healthcare is funded through their taxes. We do not pay taxes in Italy, so we will have to pay something, but because we have purchased travelers’ insurance, we will be billed, and we have the option of filing the claim with that insurance once we get back home. Dad and I slept in a small nook in the third-floor hallway because there were no beds available.
Our Travels 