Online Zoom Forum: St Francis of Assisi: The Spiritual, Ecological, and Community Vision in his Life and Work.
Date: Wednesday 24 September 2025.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Ken Webb:
Bio: Born in China and brought up in Burma, Ken Webb graduated from St Bartholomew’s Hospital, University of London to practice medicine first in the UK and then, for many years, in Thailand. He went on to study theology at Trinity College Bristol, graduating in 1992, and was ordained into Anglican ministry after a further year of post graduate study. He spent the last five years before retiring in 2017 overseeing the training of those preparing for authorised ministry in the diocese of Edinburgh. Ken was introduced to the Enneagram in 1995 and began to delve more deeply into it in 2014, undertaking a number of courses put on by the Shift Network and Enneagram Institute. Since retiring he has offered a number of taster days, courses and retreats. At the same time he has read and researched the original writings of Gurdjieff, and it is on these that his current work is based.
Speakers:
Sister Damien Marie Savino, FSE, Ph.D.:
Title: St. Francis of Assisi: A Pilgrim of Integral Ecology.
Description: St. Francis of Assisi was fundamentally a pilgrim, in both a literal and a spiritual sense – literal in that he wandered from place to place as a mendicant, and spiritual in that he saw his life and that of his friars as a pilgrimage to God through this world. His pilgrimage involved living “in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature, and with himself” (Laudato Si’ 10). In this sense, he was an exemplar of integral ecology, as Pope Francis described it in his social-environmental encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home. This talk approaches St. Francis’ spiritual, ecological, and community vision as a pilgrimage, viewed through the contemporary lens of integral ecology.
Bio: Sister Damien Marie Savino is a member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, currently serving as the Melchor Visiting Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences (CEEES) at the University of Notre Dame, with a concurrent appointment in the McGrath Institute for Church Life. She holds a doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering from The Catholic University of America as well as degrees in theology and soil science. Sister has written widely on Franciscan theology and its applications to contemporary science. She was an editor and contributor to Responding to the Global Pandemic as a Systemic Crisis: The Economy of Francesco as a New Paradigm (Angelicum University Press, 2023) and the writer and co-producer of the six-episode documentary series, Creation (Salt and Light Television, 2015). Her new book, Learning the Language of Creation: Catholic Social Teaching and Integral Ecology, will be available from Liturgical Press in January 2026.
Prof Dr Martín Cabajo-Núñez OFM:
Title: Singing with Creation: A Franciscan Challenge to Today’s Economy.
Description: My talk will highlight the unsustainability of the current economic system, which is driven by unbridled consumerism and the pursuit of endless growth, an impossibility on a world with finite resources. St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures serves as a profound critique of an economic system that commodifies every aspect of reality. It invites us to shift from a paradigm of domination to one of fraternity, from a world driven by greed to one animated by gratitude and care. Creatures are not mere objects for economic gain, but brothers and sisters, who “bear a likeness of God” and join humanity in a common song of praise. Each of them has a face and a role in the cosmic web of life.
Bio: Prof Dr Martín Cabajo-Núñez OFM, currently teaches ethics and communication at two Pontifical universities in Rome: Antonianum (PUA) and Alfonsianum (PUL). At the PUA, he has served as Vice-Rector and Rector Magnificus ad interim for three years. He also teaches regularly in Spain and the USA. He has a Doctorate degree in Moral Theology (PUL), a License degree in Germanic Philology, a Master in Social Communication (Gregorian Univ., Rome), and is a qualified computer technician. Most of Martín Carbajo-Núñez’s publications (more than 55 books and 250 articles) are listed at www.antoniano.org
Dr Darleen Pryds:
Title: Franciscan Perfect Joy and Engaged Buddhism: The Shared Path of Compassionate Presence.
Description: This talk introduces the shared practice of cultivating self-awareness and acceptance to experience what Franciscans call “perfect joy.” While there are key differences between the Franciscan spiritual tradition and Plum Village Buddhism founded by Thich Nhat Hanh, the practice of being present with what is and working with one’s habits of resistance offers a path for interfaith dialogue and for revitalized experiences of spiritual practice.
Bio: Darleen Pryds, Ph.D. is the Academic Director of the MTS-Franciscan Theology online degree at the Franciscan School of Theology where she has taught since 2001. Her research focuses on laity in the Franciscan tradition. In her spare time, she is a volunteer caregiver in hospice and is an ordained member of the Order of Interbeing, the community of monastics and laity founded by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Prof Donna Trembinski:
Title: Compassionate Community: Seeing Francis’ Connected Ways of Being.
Description: Too often today, Francis is imagined alone, a weary figure enveloped by nature, a hermit communing with God, a lone voice speaking for a new way of demonstrating devotion. To some extent this perception is the result of the modern West’s obsession with individualism but there is also hagiographic convention; saints’ lives written long after the saint lived tended to become more focused on the individual who was to be admired but not necessarily imitated. Nonetheless, these modern representations fly in the face of the earliest sources we have about Francis which, after his initial conversion, depict the saint as constantly situated in community and communion with his companions. This short talk explores Francis as the clear spiritual leader he was, but a leader who was solidly embedded in a “support network” of friends, companions and “guardians” and the meanings of the compassionate community he created around him.
Bio: Donna Trembinski is a Professor of Medieval History and Material Culture at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia Canada. Her research interests lie in the intersection of disability, medicine and religion in the thirteenth century and on the usefulness of trauma theory in historical analysis. She has published articles in Franciscan Studies, Florilegium, the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, the Journal of the History of Psychology and the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association. Her monograph, Illness and Authority: Ability and Disability in the Life of St. Francis of Assisi was published in 2020 with University of Toronto Press and won the 2022 Hagiography Society Book Prize. She currently serves as the Senior Editor of the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association and is Vice-President of the Canadian Society of Medievalists.
Fr. Murray Bodo, OFM, PH.D.:
Title: The Care of Creation: The Charism of the Early Franciscan Friars.
Description: Simply put, the early Franciscan Friars can be defined as Poor, Itinerant, Preaching Brothers of Penance, whose portal into God was the poverty of Jesus Christ, who though he was in the form of God did not consider divinity something to cling to but emptied himself taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. (Philippians 2: 6-8) It is that Evangelical poverty to kenosis that enabled the friars to be free enough to embrace all of creation as their brothers and sisters. They became free and so light, in the case of their founder St. Francis, that the birds of the air perched on his shoulders. The burden of this talk will be to show how this nourishing love of creation, this nature mysticism, played out in the daily lives of Francis and his brothers.
Bio: Father Murray is a Franciscan poet and story-teller. He holds a doctorate in English and has spent his Franciscan life teaching and writing, and leading pilgrimages to Rome and Assisi. He retired from Franciscan Pilgrimage Programs in 2020 after 43 years of service to the practice and spirituality of pilgrimage.
The author of over 30 books, including, Francis: The Journey and the Dream, which has sold over 180,000 copies and has been translated into 8 languages, including a new German translation to be released in 2026, the 800th Anniversary of St. Francis. His latest book is Brother Wind and Air.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
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