The book St. Francis and the Foolishness of God describes Francis of Assisi’s prophetic call to “change sides” and embrace relationship with those on the margins, as Jesus did.
For Francis, the order of things was turned upside down, just as it had been for the apostles…. Jesus, whom they followed and called friend, embraced, mingled with, touched, loved, cured, and broke bread with the outcasts, the marginal, the unclean of his day…. In a social structure shaped by exclusion of the leprous, the ritually unclean, the “non-chosen,” the women, the possessed, tax collectors, sinners—Jesus embraced them all, both individually and as social groups. In fact, Jesus’s very identity was as one who proclaimed the good news to the poor, who announced the inbreaking of the reign of God, and who lived the announcement by being at the side of the poor himself.