By Kathy Kelly
Pax Christi USA 1998 Teacher of Peace
In Sister Water, Brother Sultan, the author and peace activist Len Desroches pays homage to St. Francis of Assisi through simple, skillful storytelling.
He invites readers to embrace Francis’s linkage of poverty to pacifism. If we possess nothing, we won’t need weapons to defend ourselves.
Liberated from the overwhelming demands of military spending, humanity could direct desperately needed resources toward planetary survival, respecting the environment, protecting endangered species, and enabling a dignified life for human beings everywhere. Desroches notes that the entire body of yearly UN social and economic operations costs two percent of what the world’s nations spend, per year, on armaments.
“The world” of excessive wealth serves imperial elites who extend their power through invasions, enslavement, theft, and barbaric destruction. Rejecting the wisdom of worldly powers, Francis welcomed people to be fools for Christ, radically eschewing “power over” tactics. Francis cultivated communal bonds among people willing to live simply. He exemplified readiness to share resources, constantly honing his ability to care for others’ needs.
This steady growth holds hope for people, today, longing to repair a world battered by war and greed.
St. Francis would urge cruel and divisive colonizers to seek forgiveness. Supposedly mighty countries and societies should overcome false pretenses of superiority, humbly say, “We’re sorry,” and look for ways to repair the horrific damage already caused. For the US, a first step would entail closing US military bases throughout the world, freeing up millions of dollars to enable financial reparations.
Desroches describes Francis’s meeting with “Brother Sultan,” Sultan Malik al-Kamil, the Muslim leader of Palestine, Egypt, and Syria. He takes us to the war zone in 1219, in the land we now call Egypt, where Christian Crusaders waged their fifth crusade against Muslims. We first see Francis and his companion, Illuminatus, “preaching to the great and the small, advising against further battle and predicting defeat.” But a crusading army obsessed with savagery refuses to heed their message. In the year 1220, Francis mourns over the destroyed city of Damietta.
“In February, when the Crusaders crossed the Nile, there were 80,000 inhabitants of Damietta,” Desroches writes. “After nine months … when the city was taken, scarcely 3,000 were to be found, among whom only a few thousand would have been in condition to fight and defend it.”
Following the Crusaders’ horrendous decimation of Damietta, Francis sought a meeting with the Sultan. For several days, gathered in a tent, the two men explored alternatives to war.
The story reminds me of an encounter between western activists in Iraq, led by Franciscan priest Jerry Zawada, OFM, who had a chance to communicate with Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, in advance of the US Shock and Awe bombing. The western activists, living in Baghdad in 2003, learned that Aziz was planning to visit Assisi. Jerry Zawada had carried with him a scholarly paper on Francis’s encounter with the Sultan. Zawada’s team was able to send Aziz a copy of the account. Days later, before Aziz traveled, he returned the document to the team, assuring them that he had read it. They later learned that when Aziz was in Assisi, he spent time – perhaps overnight – on his knees at a prie-dieu in a chapel dedicated to Francis.
Zawada and his friends hoped that images of children in Iraqi hospitals, and of the hospital personnel trying to heal people and save lives, would convert the US public away from support for what seemed an imminent US invasion of Iraq, following 13 years of pitiless, punitive economic sanctions. Yes, Tariq Aziz had blood on his hands in the history of his service as deputy prime minister under Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein. And yet, the leaders of the US, the UK, and multiple other countries had likewise committed war crimes in the region. Could there be hope for conversion?
Desroches draws our attention to another climactic meeting which made a deep impression on Francis of Assisi. This occurred when Francis overcame a particular fear of people with Hansen’s disease, or leprosy. “Francis had always given freely to beggars,” Desroches writes, “but not to lepers.” He conquered his terror one day when, upon encountering a person with leprosy in his path, he at first turned around, wishing to avoid him. But something more powerful than his fear stirred him. He turned again, walked toward the person with leprosy, and the two people embraced each other. Having come to grips with this particular terror, fear no longer governed Francis. He felt exultant, and from that time onward, voluntary work in a hospital that cared for people with leprosy became a regular part of Francis’s life.
For those of us who realistically fear being on the cliff’s edge, wondering what the odds are for humanity to survive ecological collapse, nuclear annihilation, and the normalization of genocide, what are the chances of whole societies emulating Francis and turning around?
Desroches relies on imagination to grapple with past catastrophes and give guidance for the future. He imagines Francis, the wisdom figure, meeting with First Nations people: “You whites assumed we were savages,” says Tatanga Mani. “You didn’t understand our prayers. You didn’t try to understand. When we sang our praises to the sun or moon or wind, you said we were worshipping idols.” Desroches pictures Francis answering with themes from the Canticle of Creation. “Be praised my God, for Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and Brother Wind.”
Seeking communion with Francis, he turns to the Catholic Worker Movement’s Dorothy Day. “Love is not starving of whole populations,” Dorothy wrote. “Love is not the bombardment of open cities. Love is not killing. It is the laying down of one’s life. There is nothing that we can do but love, and dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other. To love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.”
Sister Water Brother Sultan — Francis of Assisi, by Leonard Desroches
Austin Macauley Publishers, 2025
126 pages, ISBN 9798895436356
Kathy Kelly (Kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is board president of World BEYOND War.