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In 1209, Pope Innocent III approved a plan by Francis of Assisi for a new way of religious life. This year, Franciscans around the world are marking the Eighth Centenary of the founding of their Order. In 1859, the entity that became St. John the Baptist Province in Cincinnati was formally erected as a “custody.” This 12-part series, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the province, celebrates the lives and contributions of the friars.
1898: At the request of St. Katharine Drexel, friars begin work among the Navajos in Arizona and New Mexico.
1907: Fr. Constantine Schaaf founds St. Peter Claver, one of the first African-American parishes in Louisville, Ky.
Ask a street person how they’re doing, and they are likely to respond, “I’m blessed.”
You hear it daily in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine, where the friars of St. John the Baptist Province coordinate St. Francis Seraph Ministries, a program that aids and empowers neighbors of meager means. That improbable sense of gratitude among the poor both enlightens and enriches the friars who serve them.
“Out of that minority status, from the lower rungs of the economic strata, comes some of the greatest sense of thankfulness and appreciation, the feeling of ‘God is watching over us,’” says Fr. Alan Hirt, a former pastor at inner-city parishes in Kansas and Louisiana, now the pastor of St. Monica-St. George in Cincinnati. “As a friar with a vow of poverty, it was only in living among the poor that I felt the most authentic about being a Franciscan.”
It has been the friars’ mission and their privilege to stand with German, Slovak and Mexican immigrants, Native Americans, Appalachians, African-Americans and the people of Jamaica and the Philippines through times of social injustice and economic deprivation. “They had little or nothing,” Fr. Richard Portasik says of the thousands of Slovak men and women who came to Pennsylvania in the early 20th Century. “I joined the Franciscans because I wanted to see them rise.”
Today that same spirit—the desire to raise people up—inspires the friars’ outreach efforts in places like Detroit, where the Canticle Café provides counseling and education for the homeless, and Cincinnati, where the Sarah Center gives inner-city women the tools they need to make their own jewelry and the skill they need to sell it.
In the end, the friars of our province are the ultimate beneficiaries. “I learned from people who were poor what it really means to appreciate what you have and not always be desiring more,” says Alan. For this, he feels truly blessed.
1924: Fr. Angelus Schaefer initiates African-American ministry in Kansas City, Kansas, and later founds Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
1925: Friars begin their ministry on the Louisiana Delta, establishing parishes in Happy Jack and Magnolia.
1926: Slovakian friars arrive in western Pennsylvania to serve impoverished immigrants, leading to the establishment of the Commissariat of the Most Holy Savior, now part of SJB Province.
1956: Four friars leave Cincinnati to work in the Philippines.
1962: Friars begin ministry in Appalachia at Mother of Good Counsel Parish in Hazard, Ky.
1992: Fr. Dan Havron becomes first Franciscan pastor of St. Aloysius Parish in inner-city Detroit.
2000: Four SJB friars are missioned to Jamaica, one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere.
In the fall of 1970, Br. Martin Humphreys noticed a disturbing trend in the mail he was sorting at Duns Scotus College in Southfield, Mich. “I received 12 letters from mothers in the inner city [Detroit] requesting Christmas help. I wrote the parents back, saying we would do what we could.” An appeal for donations at Mass brought an overwhelming response. Martin recruited friends, went toy shopping and delivered the gifts by Christmas.
It didn’t end there. “People who heard the [original] appeal started bringing in clothing and bags of canned goods,” all sorted and stacked in the school’s infirmary. With parish volunteers handling distribution, “It kept growing and growing.”
This past December the Franciscan Poverty Program, now based at Church of the Transfiguration in Southfield, distributed 1,200 toys and 350 food baskets to families in need—proof that one person’s compassion can truly make a difference.
