St Francis: A children's hero

An exhibition of drawings by children organised by the Peace Lab of Hal Far is on at the foyer of the Ministry of Education in Floriana until today.

More than 300 children attending SkolaSajf courses submitted the drawings for the exhibition, which opened on Wednesday.

Peace Lab director Fr Dionysius Mintoff, a Franciscan friar, said the exhibition reflected the rich interest in the beauty of nature seen through the eyes of children.

Pictures show St Francis among a bunch of revellers disturbing the evening peace of Assisi. The drawings deliver not the portrait of a saint but of a man who enjoyed life to the full and yet was dissatisfied with life's pleasures and looking for something more, he said.

What was significant in this marathon of drawings was that St Francis, who left a rich Italian merchant family to live in poverty among the birds and animals, was one of the children's heroes, said Fr Mintoff.