Home page - Pictures - Prices & Bookings - Information - Special offers - Location - Our Restaurant - Photogallery and news - Link
Many guests ask me why our hotel has the name “Los Angeles”…an answer would be easy as it is the name of the street where it is situated…but it is not the truth.. then I will tell you what I found among the dear memories of my Father: a small book with a dedication written and given to my Father by the unforgettable Lawyer Arnaldo Fortini, President of the International Society of Franciscan studies – Assisi – dated August 2nd 1962, in California.
During the Summer 1769 some friars Minor were travelling in California, guided by Friar Giovanni Crespi. It was an unknown land which appeared like a piece of Paradise to their eyes.
Everything was charming, a wonderland, vision, music, a dream: rivers flowing between wide blooming prairies, coloured birds which seemed to greet them, mountains arising under an incredibly blue sky. Everything was purity, candour, charming primordial beauty.
They came to a big river outlet. It was August 2nd, the Celebration of Forgiveness in Assisi.
Faithful to the old precept, Giovanni repeated to himself the praise which celebrated the divine prodigy.
He kneeled and gave to that land the name of the place considered by all the devoted people of Assisi and St. Francis as the celestial homeland: The Angels, Los Angeles.
Today this is the boomtown, a very populated and flourishing city.The whole territory of California has origins rich in history, Faith, Franciscan poetry.
Seven years later, in 1776, other Spanish friars Minor founded the Mission of St. Francis of Assisi, which later became the city of San Francisco.
On January 12th 1777, again two Franciscan Fathers, Tommaso della Pena and Josè Antonio de Murguia, founded the Mission Santa Chiara, which is today the city of Santa Clara.
These Franciscan Missions started to spread all over the Region, especially thanks to the restless and pious Father Iunipero Serra.
California, through the missions, experienced its first colonization, the beginning of agriculture and home-industry, toponymy, the particular architecture of its churches and farms, the civilizations of the Indians, the first attempts to penetrate to the inlands.
The economic and political life in California was quiet under the government of religious disciples for half a century. In bright afternoons, they used to sit on the wonderful beach and read those words of the Rule: “…As a prize for their efforts, they received the necessary things to live but no money, as it is convenient for God’s servants and followers of the Holy Saint Poverty.”
No money. This was the great teaching of St. Francis.
The brightness of gold”, he used to say, “is similar to a snake’s eye, which fascinates the victim before devouring it.Pecunia nihil aliud est insidia-bolus, et col uber venenosus. The first troubles came from the intrigues of foreign countries attracted by big desires of commercial expansion. Then it was the time of the Gold Fever which ironically involved that land chosen and blessed by the Man of Assisi’s disciples. One day (in January 1849), on the bank of a small river in southern California, called American river,a Mormon pioneer, Sam Brannam, immersed a flask into the river sand and took it out full of gold straws.
He was incredibly happy and frantic. He started to scream: “Gold, Gold! American River gold! It was the first gold discovery in California. The news spread out very soon. The people in search of gold came from all around the world. It was an incredible frenzy, as it is clear reading the following words by a modern novelist: “Gold is happiness, the smile of women, the power over men, the cup of every pleasure, the magic stone which changes a misery life into a dream. Gold is everything, more than the spring, more than beauty and youth”.
The fever of the gold searchers looked into the rocks, in the sand, in the rivers, everywhere. There wasn’t peace anymore. All around there were pale, eager, wild-eyed faces. The earth flamed in the dazzling of that tremendous obsession.
The sea, consecrated to the glory of St. Francis, seemed like a hot prairie. Hundreds of ships sailed abandoned by their crew, victims of a monstrous madness.
The whole country soon became war-torn, victim of hate, hunger, pestilence. The fields were abandoned, the companies declined.
Some imprecise memories survived after this tragedy. Baleful names of villages and counties: ghost valley, guns’ house, Death City. Sam Brannam died mad and desperate in a hospital, because he was not able to put his hands on all that gold, the gold he discovered and had the right to own, in his opinion.In a legend called Sanctae Clarae Virginis, a precious teaching was found, a teaching everybody should keep in their hearth to have peace: Paupertatem spiritus, quae vera himilitas est, paupertas rerum omnium continebat, which means: “When you say Poverty, and you mean the fundamental teaching of St. Francis’ Rule, you should think of a precise will of liberation and freedom and not just to the refusal of all material things”.
The bright poverty of St. Francis of Assisi is an act of supreme heroism, and we are too weak to achieve it.
Our everyday life embraces us with a chain of roses and thorns. Therefore – and I seek as witnesses everybody (humble and great, unknown or elevated to the light of an immortal fame),who understood and practised the supreme virtue of sacrifice: life is not worth living, unless - while your severe hours are approaching, - you are able to launch your soul beyond the cloudy river for a thought of love and become free and loose in front of your destiny”.
These few words written by our beloved Lawyer Arnaldo Fortini, were only the prologue of the great “apotheosis” he dreamed to realize with the twinning of S. Maria degli Angeli and the City of Los Angeles in 1969, at the highest point of the celebrations for the Los Angeles’ foundation.
Sister Death led him to a better world and so he left this unfinished work; I hope that St. Francis, the Saint of all the people, will illuminate a believer who will finish this great work, so that we will rediscover our brotherhood in St. Francis, both the lucky people who live under the shadow of the Madonna degli Angeli and the Californian citizens: many ties keep us united, but first of all our Saint Father Francis’ wish: Pax et Bonum (Peace and Goodness).
PRIMO TIRADOSSI
Assisi: Easter 1976
(in remembrance of the hotel opening)
Hotel Los Angeles - P.I. 03019310543
