2. Moreover the same Pontiff, in commending the Franciscan families to the Bishops (which Honorius III, while Francis lived, had already done), used these very ennobling words: « Since iniquity has abounded and the charity of very many has grown cold, behold the Lord has stirred up the Order of Minors, our beloved sons, who seek not what is their own, but what is Christ's, as much against heresies to be overcome, as against other mortiferous pests to be uprooted, they dedicate themselves to the evangelization of the word of God in the abjection of voluntary poverty . ³