12.

 The preoccupation which had moved Francis of Assisi to make of the members of the Third Order messengers and apostles of peace in the midst of the bitter discords and civil wars of his time was ours in the days wherein the conflagration of a horrible war was kindled in almost the entire world; it has not ceased to be so at a moment in which, here and there, the smoking hearth of this ill-extinguished conflagration still shoots out flames.