This may be true but that doesn’t take away the significance for Francis. (after all, how many Satanists did he know?) Symbols are stolen, reused and meanings changed all the time.
The Tau itself has a massive amount of significance for Francis. At the VERY least we know that it was used by other penitents to mark themselves as such. They would use something like a chalk to draw it on their habit. We also know that Francis used it as his signature. We have 2 documents that his hand literally wrote (as apposed to was copied later with the originals lost to history). Both of these have the Tau. (one it is incredibly obvious taking up half the page. The other he actually “deleted” so he could add to it but the Tau is visible through modern technology.)
There is also another interesting connection- depending how you want to interpret Francis, as a pacifist or pro-crusade there is also the potential connection to the papacy of the time. Innocent III had called a crusade in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council. He preached the passage from Ezekiel which refers to the Tau (9:4) as a way of…a kind of pep talk in defense of the crusade. It has been posited that Francis was present for this talk but scholars disagree on this point. Some scholars think it’s unlikely. raises his hand He probably heard it preached by later preachers.
So, if Francis was against the crusade, wearing the Tau would be a kind of protest to it. If he is pro then it reinforces it. The former seems to make more sense to me.
It’s huge for Francis. Massive. His signature big. I wear one, actually. (Mine is kind of cool, it’s half silver half gold. I always thought of it as representing that we are all “marked” for God and yet divided.) If you decide to display, or wear or talk about it, know you are on solid ground.
