Pope Leo X: Saint Francis is the Angel Rising from the East

Mar 28, 2026

Let us come at last to the principal and most remarkable one, which is that of St. John the Evangelist: for in chapter 7 of his Apocalypse, he is shown in spirit this seraphic man, St. Francis, and this under the form of an Angel, or angelic man, who, rising from the East, showed by the royal livery with which he was adorned that he was the herald and standard-bearer of JESUS CHRIST.

Here is the text: “I saw,” he says, “another Angel ascending from the rising of the sun, bearing the mark of the living God. Ego Ioannes, inquit, vidi alterum Angelum ascendentem ab ortu solis, habentem signum Dei vivi.” And he adds that he was about to cry out to four other Angels, who stood at the four corners of the world, adjuring them not to harm either the earth, or the sea, or the trees, until he had marked the true servants of God upon their foreheads: Quoad usque signemus servos Dei nostri in frontibus eorum.

Now this Angel, taken literally, is none other than the Blessed Father St. Francis, who, bearing in his body the true signs or stigmata of the living God JESUS CHRIST his Lord, rose so high and attained to such a degree of perfection, purity, and holiness, that he seems to have lived here below on earth rather the life of an incarnate Angel than that of a terrestrial and mortal man, such as he was.

Thus, in fact, Leo X, Sovereign Pontiff of Rome, understands it in his bull which begins: Iste vos in vineam meam. There, explaining the said vision and applying it to St. Francis, he uses the following words, which can and should greatly serve for this purpose:

Ad vineam suam excolendam, inquit, primo mane orienteram sole, misit ipse pater familias, Angelum illum ascendentem ab ortu solis, habentem signum Dei vivi, B. Franciscum, qui comitantibus mira sanctitatis viris, prima vitis huius iecit fundamenta.

“Very early in the morning,” he says, “and at the rising of the sun, the Father of the household sent, to cultivate his vineyard, that Angel who rises from the East, bearing the mark of the living God, St. Francis, who, accompanied by men of wondrous holiness, laid the first foundations of this vineyard.” Could one speak more clearly?