Francis of Assisi – a drop out of his time and yet a reformer of the Church
Fr. Leonhard Lehmann to Give a Lecture on St. Francis in the Jubilee Conference
Prof. Fr. Leonhard Lehmann
Travel broadens the mind! This is also true for the IDC’s jubilee conference in Rome and Assisi. In Fr. Leonhard Lehmann we found an expert who is more than competent. On October 23rd, he will introduce the participants to the work of St. Francis. The title of his lecture is “Francis of Assisi – a drop out of his time and yet a reformer of the Church”.
St. Francis was obviously a particularly important witness to the faith even before Jorge Mario Bergoglio election as Pope, but the last two years have meant a significant increase in the interest shown for the friend of the poor from Assisi. One of the people who really know St. Francis is Fr. Leonhard Lehmann OFM Cap.
Leonhard Lehmann was born in 1947 in Zell-Mammersbach, in the Black Forest Region of Germany. 19 years later he joined the Capuchin order and started his novitiate in Stühlingen, near Basel, Switzerland, which, up to this day is a very important place in the tradition of the order. He then studied philosophy and theology in Münster and Tübingen. He was ordained a priest in 1973. His PhD thesis was entitled “The Universality as an Essential Feature of the Prayer and Work of St. Francis of Assisi”. He was subsequently called to Münster in order to teach spirituality at the Franciscan and Capuchin Graduate School. He was, for a period of six years, in charge of the Münster Institute which, at the moment, looks for ways to confront the challenges of the present time.
For more than 25 years now, Prof. Fr. Leonhard Lehmann has been living in Rome where he holds the chair for the writings of St. Francis and St. Clare.