In Assisi, one of the main pilgrim draws is a tiny church dwarfed by its expansive surroundings, the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels near Assisi, Italy.
The chapel is just about 18 feet long by 10.5 feet wide, built of tawny colored stones and rustically plain, with the exception of its fresco-decorated upper facade. In the much larger basilica, this unusual church-within-a-church draws multitudes of visitors who jostle for space to spend a few minutes contemplating its austere interior.
Such a small and simple place of worship might be easily overlooked elsewhere, but this one is exceptional — it is the Porziuncola (“little portion” in Italian), and it is considered to be the birthplace of the Franciscan order, founded by St. Francis of Assisi in 1209.
The original Porziuncola — which is also known by its Latin name, Portiuncula — takes on particular significance as a pilgrimage destination during the Jubilee Year of St. Francis underway. However, for Americans not traveling to Italy, there are a surprising number of replicas of the famous and holy structure in the United States.
Father Robert “Bobby” Barbato suggests that the Porziuncola at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi in San Francisco, where he is rector, is about as close as a person can get to the real thing. It was dedicated in 2008 by Cardinal William Levada, the former archbishop of San Francisco who at the time was prefect of what is now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Just don’t call the shrine chapel a “replica,” or you’ll answer to the woman Father Barbato both credits with its construction and calls “a force of nature”: attorney and politician Angela Alioto, daughter of San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto, who served the city from 1968-1976.
“I don’t think anybody else could have gotten this built,” said Father Barbato, noting Alioto’s fierce devotion to St. Francis. “But she doesn’t like it to be called a replica,” he added, suggesting the word conjures visions of Disneyland.
“It is an exact copy. It’s exactly what you would see if you walked into the big shrine in Assisi — except it’s slightly smaller; 78% size. The reason is because of the size of our building — you’ve got to make it fit. If they reproduced it exactly, there would be no room around it.”
Just as in Assisi, the chapel in San Francisco is found inside another structure, a parish facilities complex near the shrine church.
“People come here — some come on pilgrimage; some don’t know it’s there — but almost everybody is kind of a little overwhelmed, in a good way,” Father Barbato said. “People come with all sorts of different things — joys and sorrows.”
Special events are planned to mark the Jubilee Year of St. Francis, including for the first time on U.S. soil an Oct. 16-Nov. 28 exhibit of relics of St. Francis at the nearby Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption.
“Every year, we do the Transitus,” Father Barbato said, referring to ceremonies marking St. Francis’ death. With 2026 marking the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death, “we’re going to try to do a really big one, starting in the shrine’s main church and then processing down to the Porziuncola.”
An indulgence is also available. “Pope Benedict XVI gave us the Porziuncola privilege, which means — apart from the indulgence of this beautiful year of St. Francis — that any pilgrim, once a year, on the day of their choosing, can make a pilgrimage to our Porziuncola, and fulfill the conditions to receive the plenary indulgence,” shared Father Barbato. “So it’s a great gift.”
St. Francis is said to have experienced a mystical vision of Christ in the original Porziuncola, then a neglected chapel. There the image of Jesus on a Byzantine-style crucifix chapel urged him, “Francis, Francis, go and repair my house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.”
Taking the divine injunction literally, Francis asked permission of the chapel’s Benedictine owners to repair it, which they granted.
After building a small hut nearby, he busily went to work. Francis was soon joined by others — who would become the first Franciscans — and around 1211, the Porziuncola was given to Francis on the condition that it be the motherhouse of the new order.
In the U.S., replicas can be visited at Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oak Brook, Illinois (currently closed); the Franciscan Monastery in Washington; the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Province of Franciscan Friars in Burlington, Wisconsin; the Regina Center in Sylvania, Ohio; the campus of the Cardinal Cushing Centers in Hanover, Massachusetts; and the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio.
Father Jonathan St. Andre, a Third Order Regular Franciscan and vice president for Franciscan Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, said a friar returning from an Assisi journey first proposed the idea to build a replica at the school.
“It was completed in October of 1987, and soon, it just became a very special place on our campus,” Father St. Andre told OSV News.
It is a site of perpetual adoration, and even marriage proposals.
“It’s just a very simple chapel,” Father St. Andre said. “Our Porziuncola probably holds about 15 people at the most. Students will come in and sit on the floor. At all hours of day and night, there’s always students there.”
It also stands outdoors, which caused Father St. Andre to reflect on the original Porziuncola.
“I sometimes wonder what St. Francis would think if he came back and saw this church of his inside a huge basilica,” Father St. Andre said. “But that’s OK. It was such a sacred place for him, and it kind of speaks of the poverty of St. Francis.”
So just what is it that makes the faithful want to build copies of sacred places?
“It’s in human nature to re-create something that we’ve known from another place,” Duncan Stroik, an award-winning architect and professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame, told OSV News. “And of course, people — and especially modern people — love photographs or images of the places we visit, (and) people that we know and love. I think it’s the same impetus to re-create buildings or parts of buildings in other places.”
The Assisi Porziuncola, Stroik observed, “becomes a bit of a relic. It’s a sacred place. We think of relics being in monstrances, and we value the bodies of the saints — the things that have touched the saints or that they used, their garments. And we value, in this case, the buildings where holy things happened.”
Ultimately, the Porziuncola — whether the original or a replica — is a place people feel close to St. Francis and God.
“For Francis, that little church was a thin place,” emphasized Father Barbato, referring to locales where the distance between heaven and earth is thought to be narrowed. “He felt our Lord there, and he felt the intercession of Our Lady — and that’s why he made it the headquarters of his order.”
From Our Sunday Visitor
During this special Jubilee Year (January 10, 2026, through January 10, 2027) to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the passing (Transitus) of St. Francis of Assisi, I was blessed to visit two of the pilgrimage chapels on the campus of Franciscan University. May we imitate, even in small ways, St. Francis’s great love for Jesus. St. Francis, patron of San Francisco and so many other people, things and places, pray for us. Pax et bonum.
The history quoted in this article is a bit off. The Church where St. Francis was told to rebuild His Church was not the Porziuncola but San Damiano, according to St. Bonaventure in his work Life of Francis:
“One day when Francis went out to meditate in the fields he was passing by the church of San Damiano which was threatening to collapse because of extreme age. Inspired by the Spirit, he went inside to pray.
“Kneeling before an image of the Crucified, he was filled with great fervor and consolation as he prayed. While his tear-filled eyes were gazing at the Lord’s cross, he heard with his bodily ears a voice coming from the cross, telling him three times: ‘Francis, go and repair my house which, as you see, is falling into ruin.’
“Trembling with fear, Francis was amazed at the sound of this astonishing voice, since he was alone in the church; and as he received in his heart the power of the divine words, he fell into a state of ecstasy. Returning finally to his senses, he prepared to put his whole heart into obeying the command he had received. He began zealously to repair the church materially, although the principle intention of the words referred to that Church which Christ purchased with his own blood, as the Holy Spirit afterward made him realize […]””
He had already restored the church of San Damiano when he “moved to the place called the Porziuncola, where there was an ancient church in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mother of God, long abandoned and neglected. Seeing it in that wretched state, and moved by his deep devotion to the Mother of all goodness, the Saint took up residence there and completed its restoration in the third year of his conversion.” It was around this little country church, likely built in the 4th century and gifted to Francis by the Benedictines of Subasio around 1209, that the first Franciscan fraternity was born, composed of a small group of enthusiastic companions.” https://www.secretumbria.it/en/the-porziuncola-and-saint-mary-of-the-angels/
Thanks for the corrected information and link to the article. Would just love to make a trip to Italy, now, and see all of this in person! Love St. Francis of Assisi!
Reply to Roseanne Sullivan: I too want to thank you for the wonderful link. I have been to Assisi, Italy on an amazing pilgrimage and it’s a very beautiful and spectacular countryside in Italy. If you get a chance visit it at least once in your lifetime. St Francis of Assisi in the Jubilee Year of St. Francis of Assisi pray for us.