Our Franciscan Values

At Siena College, our community lives to the standards provided for us by Our Franciscan Values – DORS. DORS stands for diversity, optimism, respect, and service. The root of these values comes from the life works of St. Francis and St. Clare. Both St. Francis and St. Clare faced much adversity, yet overcame it all to accomplish great things and still demonstrate the core values that we live by today. Together, the actions of St. Francis and St. Clare define the ideals of the Siena College community. The first core value of DORS is diversity. According to Siena College, diversity is “an invitation to celebrate the God-given uniqueness” (Siena College: Our Franciscan Values – DORS).

St. Francis demonstrated this aspect by overcoming the

Francis’s diversity. At the time in which Francis lived, nobody sought to become poorer, only to increase their wealth. On the way back from Apulia, Francis sold all of his possessions and dressed himself in cheap garments. Francis then had nothing but his cheap clothing and a sack of money which he did not want. To rid himself of this unneeded wealth, Francis went the the Church of San Damiano to donate the money to the priest. His offer was refused due to a fear of mockery, so Francis “threw it onto a window opening, since he cared for it as much as he cared for dust” (Celano, 2004, p. 30). By giving up his wealth, Francis liberated himself from his constrictive social status to become a man with nothing but his

In both of their lives, St. Francis and St. Clare faced many challenges which were overcome by displaying a strong sense of optimism. St. Francis committed himself to his future purpose in the act of kissing the leper. When a sickly man reached out to St. Francis to ask for money, Francis did something completely unexpected. Instead of giving the leper money, “Francis kissed the leper on the hand and the mouth” (Moses, 2009, p. 33). By kissing the leper, Francis put his own health at risk, but that did not matter to him. He gave a man who has nothing compassion, thus demonstrating that Francis had a sense of his future in helping others. Not only did Francis show that he had a purpose when he kissed the sick man, but he also demonstrated his sense of optimism when he experienced a spiritual awakening. After a year in captivity in a makeshift prison, Francis was a different man that he was before. No longer able to find joy and happiness is the activities he used to love, Francis was a hollow man. “In time he learned to fill the empty space with God” and began to see things in a new light. By filling his hollowed soul with God, Francis showed that he had hope in God’s plan for