Saint Francis of Assisi

Bio:

St. Francis of Assisi is one of the most beloved and widely-venerated Christian saints of all time. Unsurprisingly, he is also one of the most domesticated, with his image often being reduced to that of a "peace-loving hippie who talks to animals," with his rougher and more radical facets smoothed over in favor of the sanitized postcard version of Francis who watches over gardens. (No hate, I have a little garden with a little statue of him in it. That's just not all he was.) He was an interfaith peace activist who was radically anti-wealth and anti-property, and he was a former prisoner of war who probably suffered from PTSD. The earliest biography of Francis (written only a few years after his death by people who knew him personally) is also much queerer than you might expect, and like other queer hagiographies, it has been edited to be more "straight" over time. In particular, Francis had a radical vision of an all-female Holy Trinity who named him "Lady Poverty," a title he joyfully embraced for himself. He also had a lifelong close partnership with a man, and it's pretty gay to be in love with men even if we don't know any sexual details about their partnership.

My objective with this icon was to depict Francis as Lady Poverty, portraying his gender nonconformity within a materialist framework, and I hope that it reminds viewers of the poor material conditions still experienced by many trans and gender-nonconforming people in the world today. I would like to nominate St. Francis of Assisi as a special patron for transgender military veterans. Whether Francis himself was gay or trans or simply a being who transcended these categories altogether, he was unabashedly queer, and "Christendom" would do well to remember that.

Iconography

• I have depicted Francis with a classically feminine pose, and wearing a veil-like head-covering that would have been worn by women in his time.
• The animals that surround him are all female animals with babies.
• The nesting dove has a red flame above its head that indicates it represents the Holy Spirit.
• Francis' halo is made of dog roses and wild thyme, both of which are flowers that are native to his home in Umbria.

Further reading about Francis of Assisi:

https://qspirit.net/francis-assisi-queer/