Kathleen Brady is the author of Francis and Clare: The Struggles of the Saints of Assisi, winner of a Catholic Media Association award in biography. Her previous subjects include Ida Tarbell and Lucille Ball.
St. Francis has long been widely, but inaccurately, hailed as the inventor of the Christmas crèche, the collection of figurines set up in churches and homes. But a crèche is not what St. Francis created, argues Kathleen Brady.