St. Francis of Assisi felt a deep union with living creatures, who, like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, lived the Gospel precept of complete reliance on God spontaneously and naturally. His strong love and compassion for animals and humans 
resembles the great Buddhist saints, past and present, who share these sentiments.

St. Francis reveled in praising the Creator and the entire creation, including animals.
Animals were to him a gift, not an opportunity for homilizing or appropriation. When seeking of Francis's relationship  to nature, those who knew him personally said nothing about his preaching to the birds. Rather, what impressed them was his deep affinity for creatures, his habit of speaking to them with affection, and their attraction to him. He was like them in his great simplicity.

In his love of God's creation, Francis encountered nature as a unified whole. Near his death, when he composed the "Canticle of Brother Sun," he referred to the celestial bodies and the four classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water); he made no mention of any lving creatures but no doubt saw them as part of the whole creation. In other writings, Francis mentioned creation and animals only rarely.

He only twice gave rules as to the use of animals by his followers: they were not to ride horses, and they were not to keep pets. These rules are only partly about poverty; they encouraged friars not to treat animals as objects or possessions. And,in the case of horseback riding, his rule distanced friars from the proud world of chivalry.

Above all Francis loved birds, larks in particular. We have a saying attributed to Francis in which he gives reasons for this spiritual affection: Our sister Lark has a hood like a religious and is a humble bird, who gladly goes along the road looking for some grain. Even if she finds it in the animal dung, she pecks it out and eats it. While flying, she praises the Lord, like good religious who look down on earthly things, and whose life is always in heaven. Moreover, her clothes, that is her feathers, resemble earth, giving an example to religious not to wear clothes that are colorful and refined, but dull, like earth..

This kind of moralizing seems unusual for Francis's attitude toward animals and is less an attempt to teach a lesson than to explain the reason for his spontaneous delight and affection.

Once while travelling near Bevagna in the Spoleto valley, Francis spied a large flock of birds in he field by the side of the road. Delighted by them, he approached them and addressed them with his familiar greeting, "The Lord give you peace." He was even more delighted that they did not fly away, even as he walked into their midst. He voiced great praise to God for this and urged his sister birds to do so too. This was something they did, singing, spreading their wings, taking flight as he blessed them with the sign of the cross. This incident, later elaborated into the famous "Sermon to the Birds," exemplifies Francis's relationship to nature: delight at its presence and greater delight when animals did not fear him, both leading to praise of the Creator who made them.

Francis's respect for animals freedom and dignity shows him at his most sensitive and attractive. He could not bear the thought of a living creature caught in a trap or destined to be killed, even for food - despite his rejection of religious abstinence from meat. As Francis and the brothers walked the highways of Umbria after a rain, he would stop to pick up and move worms that had crawled on the road to escape the water. He could not bear the thought of people stepping on them.

He expressed the same compassion to animals brought to him or the brothers for food. Once, at Greccio, a brother brought in a hare caught in a trap, doubtless proud of having provided a meal for the community. Francis took the hare, held it, stroked it for some time, and then went out and released it. The small creature must have found a sense of security beside Francis, for it would not leave his side; even when chased off, it found its way back to his feet. Eventually he had one of his brothers take it to the deep woods.

In a world where nature was typically exploited as a source of resources or feared as dangerous, those who knew him commented on Francis's affection for nature and delight in animals.
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