Susan Pitchford

In a little town in Italy, nearly eight hundred years ago, Francis of Assisi renounced everything he owned to follow Christ with passionate and single-minded abandon. Even today, centuries later, this simple saint draws people around the world to Francis' story of living in humility, love, and joy.

Here in "Following Francis," Susan Pitchford tells her own story of the Franciscan life as a member of the Third Order, founded by Francis himself so that people from all walks of life could follow the saint's ideal. Pitchford learned that the Franciscan tradition isn't the exclusive possession of friars or cloistered nuns, but a spiritual path for ordinary people living in the twenty-first century.