Who Are We 

    We Are Franciscans

    In 1182, Pietro Bernadone, the wealthiest man of his Umbrian mountaintop town of Assisi, and his wife, the Lady Pica, welcomed a son into the world. Named Giovanni by his mother, Pietro would rename him Francesco, perhaps to honor France where he purchased the fine cloth he sold as a merchant. Like the young men of his day, Francis longed to be a knight, but God had other plans.

    Finding the courage to embrace his greatest fear in the person of a leper, and listening to the voice of Christ in the chapel of San Damiano asking him to rebuild the Church, Francis’ life was transformed. He stood naked before the Bishop of Assisi to renounce his father’s wealth and knelt before the Pope to pledge his fidelity to the Church. Desiring only to live the Gospel in poverty and humility, he would embrace the Christ Child in the creche in Greccio, endure the humiliation of Christian Crusaders to meet with the Muslim Sultan to seek peace, and embrace the beauty and presence of God in the gift of creation.

    For the last two years of his life, he bore the Stigmata, the five wounds of Christ crucified, on his body. Embracing Sister Death on October 4, 1226, Francis’ witness to the Gospel created the foundations of today’s Franciscan family: Friars of the First Order, the Poor Clares of the Second Order, and lay men and women living Francis’ vision in the world, the Order of Secular Franciscans. Together, we seek to witness faithfully to the gospel of Jesus Christ that inspired St. Francis and to make a difference in the world in which we live.      

    We Are Capuchins

    In the mid 1520’s, three hundred years after St. Francis founded the Order and on the cusp of the Protestant Reformation, three friars left their own fraternities with the desire to live the Rule of St. Francis, approved by Pope Honorius III in 1223, in strict obedience. This Capuchin (ka-pyoo-shin) reform, named for the long hoods worn by the friars, had a rocky start but with time came stability and growth. Sharing a common life with an emphasis on contemplative prayer, austerity and fraternity, the Capuchins, like the also newly-formed Society of Jesus (Jesuits) entered into missionary work to re-evangelize Europe in the Catholic Reformation of the mid-1500’s. The friars were noted for their heroic ministry during the deadly epidemics that plagued Europe from the 16th to 18th century.

    During World War II, American troops marching through Italy helped to spread the news of the mystic and spiritual guide, Capuchin friar St. Pio of Pietrelcina, who bore the Stigmata throughout his adult life. In Detroit during the Great Depression, now Blessed Solanus Casey, a humble priest-friar thought unworthy to preach or hear confessions, helped to organize soup kitchens and other support ministries to serve the needs of the poor and unemployed during the Great Depression. This work continues to thrive today, standing as a living witness to the Capuchin’s commitment to the social gospel, walking with and caring for the needs of the poor and marginalized in our midst. St. John Paul II once made note of the virtue of poverty that has become a great wealth of the Capuchin Order: “They say you Capuchins are poor, but you are actually very, very rich. You have saints.”     

    We are Capuchin-Franciscan Friars of St. Augustine Province

    In the fall of 1873, responding to the conflict between the Church and the German government and the needs of an immigrant Church in America, three friars left the Capuchin monastery in Altoetting in Bavaria to establish the Order in the United States, accepting the ministry of St. Augustine Church, a German-speaking parish in Pittsburgh. Almost immediately the founding provincial, Fr. Hyacinth Epp, went to work, establishing the novitiate, the beginnings of St. Fidelis Seminary and the Third Order in the parish. In 1875, the fraternity would respond to a call for German-speaking religious, sending three friars to care for the spiritual needs of the “Volga Germans,” German wheat farmers who were fleeing Russia to make a new home in Ellis County, Kansas.

    As the province grew, it initially served in parishes in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kansas. In 1930, it accepted its first call to mission work outside of the continental United States in Puerto Rico; in 1955, the friars began the arduous mission work of bringing the Catholic faith to the people of Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific. Responding to the call of the Second Vatican Council, friars began to enter into urban ministries in the 1970’s, often leaving behind historically German communities so to serve the needs of those living in distressed neighborhoods in Baltimore, Cleveland, and Washington, DC. Today, with our Provincial Center still in Pittsburgh, the friars of St. Augustine Province continue to serve the needs of God’s people from fifteen friaries situated in a triangle with end points in Cleveland, Philadelphia and Washington, DC.