7. But concerning Francis and his institutes, neither has the preaching of the Apostolic See ever been completely silent. Moreover from the monuments of more recent memory, there must not be passed by those Letters of Gregory XVI, in which he writes of the shrine of St. Mary of the Angels at Assisi: « In that temple, the chief ornament of Umbria and to that extent of the whole Western World, Saint Francis of Assisi, working greater things every day, having progressed in exceptional sanctity, and accepting wonderful charisms from the Omnipotent God having been moulded in continual meditation of heavenly things, impelled by a divine instinct, layed the foundations of his Order, and was made worthy of gazing upon Our Divine Repairer and His Most Holy Theotokos, and of the sweetest conversations (with them). » ⁸ -- But most of all the acts of Leo XIII, which are remembered well, are worthy (of mention), he who in a certain Encyclical Letter Auspicato, where he persues the praises of the Father of Assisi with grandiloquence and grave prayer, has this (to say): « Those wonderful things of his, (which) must be celebrated with angelic rather than human proclamation, sufficiently demonstrate how great and how worthy was that Man, whom God destined for the recalling of his contemporaries to Christian morals. Indeed at the shrine of San Damiano a greater than human voice was heard by Francis: Go, watch over My House (which is) falling down. Nor is there less admiration for the sight divinely offered to Innocent III, when he himself seemed to see Francis sustaining the waverying walls of the Lateran Basilica on his shoulders. The strength and reason for which portents is evident: undoubtedly it was to signify, that Francis was not a light-armed guard of the Christian republic throughout those times and would be a future column (of support). In truth there is no delay for the one who is unequipped. Those twelve, who were first to bring themselves together under his discipline, stood forth like a scanty seed, which with the nod of God and the auspices of the Supreme Pontiffs, swiftly was seen to grow up into the most bountiful crop. ». -- Likewise in the Constitution Misericors Dei Filius: « All of the Franciscan institutes have already been set up to observe the precepts of Jesus Christ:for neither did (that) most holy author intend any other end, than that the Christian life be more diligently exercised in them, as in a certain gymnasium. Truly did the first two Franciscan Orders, formed with the disciplines of great virtues, follow after him more perfectly and divinely ». -- And in the Constitution Felicitate quadam; « For that, which is named the family of the Friars Minor, is remarkable as one being most worthy of the benevolence and attention of the Apostolic See. For her, indeed, her own Begetter commanded all those laws, which he himself gave as precepts for living, so that she would guard them most religiously in the perpetuity of subsequent times; nor did he command this in vain. For there is scarcely any society of men, which has brought forth so many rigid guardians of virtue, or has given forth so many heralds of the Chrisitian Name, martyrs for Christ, citizens of Heaven, and/or in which there has assisted so great an issue of men, who brightened Christian and civil society with those arts, by which they are judged to stand before all others who excell (in them) ».