St Francis's Feast Returns as Italian National Holiday After Nearly Half a Century

Italy marked 4 October 2026 as a national holiday for the first time since 1977, after Parliament approved legislation the previous year restoring the feast of St Francis of Assisi, the country's patron saint. The change returns to the national calendar a date that had been absent from it for nearly half a century. The same year carries a second, specifically Catholic weight: eight hundred years since the death of the Poverello.

Ragusa Oggi, reporting the restoration, linked the two, noting that the octocentenary falls this year and treating the overlap as no coincidence rather than as an accident of scheduling. The outlet's 4 October headline promised a round-up of appointments across the province.

In Modica, observance began on the evening of 3 October at the Chiesa di San Domenico – Madonna del Rosario, where the Frati Minori Cappuccini of Modica and the Compagnia del Piccolo Teatro staged a representation of the Preghiera del Transito di San Francesco. The account reached Radio RTM as a reader submission, published under the outlet's "Riceviamo" heading, and describes the performance not as a spectacle but as an experience of extraordinary spiritual intensity.

The contributor sets the evening against a backdrop of churches that appear increasingly empty, and of men and women who have drifted from the faith for a variety of reasons, arguing that the search for God is never truly finished. That framing is the writer's own, offered as a first-person reflection rather than as reported fact.