Margaret Carney, OSF, is a member of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities and is a teacher of Franciscan history and spirituality. She continues to serve as a lecturer and leader for Catholic higher education and Franciscan organizations in the United States. She is president emerita of St. Bonaventure University.
It is easy for us to romanticize this early experience of Francis—his first embrace of a leper. We speak of it often as emblematic of dramatic change in a person seeking to know Christ, to live by the Gospel’s injunction. Given the lack of experience of most modern people with the experience of Hansen’s disease (leprosy), it becomes hard to truly imagine the kind of courage and self-control that serving such sufferers entails.
