You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast is the day that we remember all of our beloved dead.

And in particular, today is a day that we pray for the souls in purgatory,

for those that have died that are going through a purification process before they are called to join God in heaven.

So it is a beautiful practice,

and I challenge you to do this if you are available today,

to visit the graves of people that you have known and loved, or even people that you haven't known,

and pray for those people by name in the cemetery that they can be united fully with God in heaven.

Now, this week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast,

we are talking about another reason

why the Catholic faith is so good.

And this is because the Catholic faith allows us

to become the best version of ourselves.

And we see this through the stories of the saints. So today we're going to

talk about our first of four saints this week, and that saint is St. Francis. St. Francis of

Assisi celebrated his feast day at the beginning of October, and he is one of the most

popular saints in the Catholic faith. He, of course,

founded the Franciscan order. But at the beginning of his life, he was not necessarily a inspirational

figure. Francis was born in Assisi, Italy, into a wealthy family. His father was a merchant and they had plenty of money.

And all that Francis really cared about was going to parties wearing fine clothes and being seen as a

hero on the battlefield. Francis lived during a time of the Crusades. When people, whole armies were called together,

they left Italy, went into the Holy Land, and tried to remove the Muslims who were taking

that part of the world over. Well, on his way to the Crusades to prove himself, Francis fell

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