Oct. 2, 2026 @ 5:00 PM. The Commonwealth Club of California - 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA. San Francisco has been connected to Francis of Assisi for over 250 years, when Spanish explorers gave the name San Francisco Bay to the waters east of the Golden Gate. That connection intensified 180 years ago when the town of 600 called Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.
Humanities West and the Italian Cultural Institute celebrate this civilizational connection to the influential Italian who founded the Order of Friars Minor for priests and brothers and the Order of Saint Clare for cloistered nuns — having been inspired by his earlier membership in the lay organization Brothers and Sisters of Penance (a part of which organization later became the Franciscan Tertiaries).
