It’s official: St. Francis’ feast day back to being a national holiday in Italy

Italy’s Senate Constitutional Affairs Committee, deliberating in session Wednesday, Oct. 1, approved a bill reinstating Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of Italy, as a national holiday. The measure had been approved in first reading by the Chamber of Deputies last month, with only two votes against.

Oct. 4 will therefore be a public holiday starting in 2026, after having been a public holiday until 1977.

“I welcome with joy and satisfaction,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni commented, “the news of the Senate’s final approval of the parliamentary bill reintroducing, after 50 years, Oct. 4, the day on which we celebrate St. Francis, the patron saint of Italy, as a national holiday. The government has wholeheartedly supported the [legislative] process of the bill, which has taken up and made its own the appeal launched a year ago by Davide Rondoni, poet and president of the National Committee for the Celebrations of the Eighth Centenary of the Death of the Poverello [Poor Man] of Assisi.”

“The bipartisan and virtually unanimous support for the bill is an important sign of the unity found in politics around one of the most representative and distinctive figures of [our] national identity. A saint beloved by the entire Italian people and in whom all Italians identify. The national holiday will be an opportunity to celebrate an extraordinary man and remind us, every year, who we are and what unites us profoundly,” Meloni said.

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