Thank you for the privilege of living an hour among the historians of Saint Francis and among his American children. And thank you for the superlative honor you have awarded me.

When the world of a sudden hardens and turns into a kind of fierce mythology, instead of the consummate humanity that God wished, the Franciscan genius, which is above all a spiritual genius, spreads out, thickens, and intensifies, even as do cosmic forces. A great anxiety falls over us and doubles the meaning of our terrestrial mission.

The cord that we wear around our waist should remind us day by day, especially in time of strife, that our mission surrounds us and clings to us in the same way.