A Small Franciscan Landscape: Making Prayer Beads for the Season of Creation

Guest post by Fiach O'Broin-Molloy

I spend part of my working life tending bees and another part making rosaries and devotional pieces in Paisley, Scotland. In this Saint Francis collection, those two strands meet. The pieces were designed during 2026, the eighth centenary of Francis’s death, and I wanted them to answer the anniversary through material and use: not commemorative objects to be placed beyond reach, but things to be held, carried and returned to in prayer.

September gives that work a particular setting. The Season of Creation runs from 1 September to the feast of Saint Francis on 4 October. This year, the evening before the feast also marks eight hundred years since the Transitus—Francis’s passage from earthly life. Franciscan sources call this his “Easter”: a life finally handed back to God. The movement from creation to Transitus matters. Francis’s kinship with birds, animals and the elements was not sentimental scenery. It belonged to a life centered on Christ, shaped by poverty, reconciliation and praise.

That is why I built the collection around the Tau. It is the simplest of crosses, the sign Francis repeatedly made and used as a blessing. In my original metalwork, Francis does not simply wear it. His open arms form the crossbar, the folds of his habit descend into its stem, and doves rise around him. On the reverse sits one small bee. As a beekeeper, that detail matters to me: it joins Franciscan care for even overlooked life with the patience, attentiveness and quiet labour shared by beekeeping and prayer.

The materials carry the same story. In the Saint Francis Tau Jade Rosary, natural jade varies through moss, leaf and lichen greens. Antiqued brass leaves the recessed details dark while the raised surfaces catch the light. It is substantial in the hands, because I wanted the beads and metalwork to remain present beneath the fingers.

The Maple and Bronze Rosary is warmer and more rustic: dark maple, knotted rope and worked bronze. Its centre shows Francis meeting the wolf amid trees, birds and fish. The wolf is not erased or turned into a decorative pet; it is met. On the reverse, lilies and bees surround the words, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace”—not a vague wish for peace elsewhere, but a prayer to become part of its making. The Tau Pendant distils the same design into a cross worn simply on leather.

I chose materials that do not disguise what they are. Wood keeps its grain. Stone varies from bead to bead. Antiqued metal holds shadow and develops character through touch; leather softens with wearing. These are not pieces intended to remain untouched and immaculate. They are made to grow familiar through use.

No devotional object can undertake the work of prayer for us, and no anniversary object can contain the life of Francis. But something held can interrupt us: a Tau beneath the thumb returning attention to Christ, a wolf asking what fear might be met with mercy, a bee recalling the small life entrusted to our care.

As the Season of Creation moves towards the Transitus and the feast, that is what I hope these pieces offer: a small Franciscan landscape held in the hand—and an invitation to begin again in prayer, peace and attentive care.

May the Lord give you peace.