From the National Office
Joyful Christmas greetings! I hope all of you had a peaceful Advent season and are enjoying these celebratory days of Emmanuel.
The national office has been busy in these recent months with transitions and new projects. To this end, I have been asked by the Board of Directors to serve as the Interim Executive Director until February 28, 2025. We have already begun implementing some of the many ideas from our year-long Learning and Listening sessions, and we are excited to offer two big events in the new year, the Membership Forum in January and the Annual Retreat in February.
A new addition to our national office is Fify Juliana, who will be assisting the Federation, also through February, with our transitions and administrative work around membership and finances. Fify has been an integral and indispensable help with all the many and varied work of the national office.
Meanwhile, the Federation has begun a national search for a new Executive Director. The job description and application link can be found here. Please forward the link to anyone who might be interested in the position. You can read more about the National Office and the Board in the Updates from the Board which went out to all members via email on December 23rd.
Member Spotlight
Hello ~ My name is Gabriela Martinez, and I am proud to be a member of the Franciscan family by way of being the Associate of Campaigns with the Franciscan Action Network. I grew up in Allentown, PA (yes, the town from the Billy Joel song) and have always felt a strong connection with my sibling Earth.
I really began to connect to the Franciscan charism on a trip I was privileged to take during my Senior year of high school to Glacier National Park in Montana, where I learned about how the injustice against the indigenous nations of that area was inherently intertwined with environmental suffering and greater systemic injustices. With this experience, I went on to Xavier University in Cincinnati to earn a degree in Environmental Science and Peace & Justice Studies. I performed some academic studies with Harvard Forest on mycorrhizal fungi and soil carbon storage before graduating university.
I then moved to the DC area, where I now live (in Alexandria), to start a short stint with AmeriCorps, teaching Math to 8th grade students. Following both my passions and led by the Spirit, I found myself at a rally on the National Mall advocating for a bill which I thought would positively impact my students’ lives. There, I was pulled aside by a Franciscan sister to take a picture with the Franciscan Justice Circle in DC…and thus began my Franciscan journey. It has been a round-about path to this family, but I find it so rejuvenating and life-giving to be working on public policy and civic education through an intergenerational and morals-based lens to make a positive impact toward environmental justice. I may still be a young professional, but I know that living my life as a prayer, as Francis and Clare did, is the start of a good path. Paz y bien.
Meet the New Board!
The Franciscan Federation’s Board of Directors currently has 10 members and is committed to leading the Federation into this new time in the spirit of Francis, Clare, and our many congregational founders.
Jeanne Connolly (President) serves as the Director of Charism and Mission with the Wheaton Franciscans. She has been a Covenant Companion (Associate) since 1995. She earned a Doctorate in Adult Education from Northern Illinois University with an emphasis on Human and Organizational Development. She has served on the Federation Board since July 2021.
Darleen Pryds, PhD (Vice President) lives this Franciscan path that we share and has done so in meandering ways since her youth. She has studied the Franciscan lay tradition since 1980; she has taught at the Franciscan School of Theology since 2001; and she serves the Franciscan family through retreats, writing, and presence. She serves in hospice communities where she cultivates the capacity of presence with people at the end of life. You can find many of her publications on her Academic.edu page.
Jeanne Bessette, OSF (Secretary) is in her second round of congregation leadership, this time as President. She has been a high school English teacher, Principal and the founding President of a Cristo Rey High School in Cincinnati. She has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English literature and a Doctorate in private school administration. This is her second time of deep involvement in the Federation. In the first, she helped to create the Commissions model for the Federation. She has also served on LCWR’s national board for five years.
Kevin Ryan (Treasurer) is a retired Hospital Administrator, serving in several hospitals in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. He also has been a partner and sole owner of Managment Consulting practices serving Church organizations throughout the United States for the past 35 years. He currently serves as the Chairperson for the Rochester Minnesota Franciscan Cojourners.
Michael Fenn is the Executive Director for Mt. Irenaeus Franciscan Mountain Community in Western New York. He lives outside of Buffalo with his wife Julie. Mike has been involved with the Franciscans since he attended St. Bonaventure University, serving as a Franciscan Volunteer Minister at St. Francis Inn in Philadelphia. He earned an MA in Pastoral Studies from Catholic Theological Union in May 2023.
Sandra Lyons, OSF is a Bernardine Franciscan Sister and currently serves as a member of her congregation’s leadership team. She received a Master’s degree in Nursing and Midwifery from the University of Pennsylvania, and set up a midwifery practice through Sacred Heart Medical Center in Chester, PA. She taught Nursing at the first Catholic nursing school in Romania through the auspices of the USCCB and Catholic Health Association. Later, as the Coordinator for JPIC for her congregation, she advocated for marginalized groups world-wide.
Celeste Crine, OSF is presently Assistant Congregational Minister of the Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia. Before being elected to leadership, she ministered for 10 years as a staff member of the School of Applied Theology, in Berkeley, CA. Celeste looks forward to the possibilities for greater collaboration within the larger Franciscan family, religious and laity.
Michelle (Shell) Balek, OSF has been a Dubuque Franciscan for over 40 years. She has a BA in Sociology/Social Work, with an MA in Sustainable Development/Community Development and Social Action. She currently serves on her congregation’s Charism Team and on the staff of Shalom Spirituality Center.
Betsy Savare has been an Associate of the Sisters of St. Francis of Oldenburg, IN for fifteen years. She worked in the PBM industry as Director of Operations for 40 years and is retired. She is the mother of two daughters and proud grandmother of three teenage grandchildren.
Michael Higgins, TOR currently serves as the Vicar Provincial of the TOR Province of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and resides at St. Francis Friary in Loretto, PA. He received a Doctorate in Franciscan History and Spirituality from the Antonianum in Rome. He also served his Order as Vicar General and Minister General and had the opportunity to live in Rome for 16 years.
Board Committee: Advancement
The Board has several working committees, including the Finance Committee, the Governance Committee, and the new Advancement Committee.
The Franciscan Federation recently named board members Mike Fenn, and Darleen Pryds to the Advancement Committee, joining Eunice Park, Interim Executive Director, to begin the work of the committee. The responsibility of this group is to ensure the Federation has the proper incoming funds to provide the programs and services the members of the Federation are seeking. While this will include growing external donations, such as individual gifts, foundation grants, and other fundraising campaigns, the committee is currently focused on enhancing the value of membership within the Federation, with the objective of attracting those who are religiously professed and lay Franciscans, to join our community. We are also exploring partnerships and collaborations with other Franciscan organizations make membership even more valuable.
The committee is interested in finding others who would like to help us with this important work. If you have a background in marketing, communications, and/or fundraising, please reach out to Mike at mfenn@sbu.edu.
Events
Membership Forum
The Franciscan Federation Membership Forum is on Saturday, January 25, 2025. The purpose of this special gathering is to celebrate and inspire all of us as we move forward in these days of new beginnings, transitions, and a renewal of our charism. Sr. Mary Beth Ingham, CSJ will give our keynote. Her talk, “Attending to the Seeds of a Franciscan Future” will address themes pertinent to us today: What are the seeds of a truly Franciscan renewal of the world? What Franciscan pathway do we see opening before us? What seeds are sprouting? What is ours to do?
This event is open to everyone. Thanks to our sponsors below, this event is FREE for all members of the Franciscan Federation, and non-members are welcome for a fee. For more information on this event and membership, and to register yourself or a group, see our website.
Annual Virtual Retreat
On Sunday, February 23, 2025 we have our Annual Virtual Retreat ““Singing a New Canticle: 1225-2025” with the Franciscan Scholar, Br. Bill Short, OFM. In this 800th anniversary year of the Canticle, what is it about St. Francis of Assisi’s inclusive vision of all creatures as brothers and sisters that can inspire us today? What clues does he offer that suggest an alternative approach to living in our “Common Home” as Pope Francis has encouraged us to do? Click here to register for the Retreat. This event is open to everyone, with a deep discount for Federation members and groups joining together.
Sharings from Congregations
Land Justice and the Dream Project: The Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls Explore a Significant New Direction
By: Mike Schut, Director of Integral Ecology for the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls. Mike previously worked in a variety of roles for Earth Ministry and as Economic and Environmental Affairs Officer for the national Episcopal Church. Mike is the editor/co-author of three books connecting faith and spirituality with caring for the earth.
“Our goal is to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering . . . to discover what each of us can do about it.” – Pope Francis in Laudato Si’
To me this is one of the most powerful statements from Pope Francis’s encyclical.
Become painfully aware? Turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering? Even beginning to do so requires seeing, not denying, the losses all around us: from species extinctions to the impacts of a warming planet. And for many congregations, the loss, too, of many sisters and brothers within their communities.
The Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls (FSLF) Minnesota have chosen to be open to seeing and feeling these losses—and to discover what they can do about it.
Land Ethic: Two years ago, the FSLF Delegate Assembly’s “Directional Statement” challenged the community to live out their “Land Ethic Statement.” Beautiful and powerful, that statement understands “community” to include not only humans but also all created reality and challenges us to “shift our spiritual consciousness through communal and individual conversion to an integral ecological spirituality.”
Dream Project: That assembly then adopted their “Dream Project,” which includes two primary and related initiatives: first, to restore native habitat to their land and, second, to develop an environmental learning center informed by Franciscan spirituality. Through the Dream Project, the sisters will nurture the land’s health and diversity and, through the learning center, provide an invitation to all to continue seeing and responding to Earth’s losses.
Land Justice: As the Dream Project developed, the team learned of the Land Justice Futures (LJF) program for women religious communities. LJF defines land justice as “The practice of centering ecological, social, and racial justice in decisions about how land is used, loved, and governed by people.” As Dream Project manager, Sister Mary Hroscikoski, wrote recently, “Land justice is now a crucial part of the Dream Project. We continue learning and discerning what is ours to do as a community to protect land from extraction, to regenerate its health, and to expand equity and access to dispossessed groups.”
In the face of loss within their own community, and as the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are heard ever more plainly through the impacts of climate change and loss of species, it is refreshing and empowering to be working with a community discerning what it is theirs to do in such practical, life-giving ways.
Franciscan Thoughts…
Finding My Way as a Lay Franciscan
By: Darleen Pryds, PhD, Vice President of the Board
I first encountered the Franciscan way in the Spring semester of 1980 when I started studying Franciscan history…I was assigned the Little Flowers of St. Francis as a freshman in college, and I hated it! That’s how God hooked me. I found the book and stories of Francis to be overly sentimental and even sappy. At the same time, I became curious about the young Francis whose conflict with his father was so raw and volatile, it made my own relationship with my dad seem amiable. I was curious to learn more about how Francis navigated his own path into adulthood, because I was struggling to find my own, especially with regard to my father.
I kept studying, in part out of intellectual curiosity and in part out of personal vocation. Along the
way I became curious about lay people associated with Francis or the friars. King Robert of
Naples who preached as a lay Franciscan became the subject of my first book. Rose of Viterbo,
the adolescent lay street preacher then caught my attention, so I studied her and wrote some
academic articles about her. It was the authenticity of their call to preach that struck me. Their
willingness to take up a countercultural path of faith inspired me.
But I struggled to find my community.
As an academic of the tradition, I looked for avenues to share my research. Early on, back in
the late 1980s and early 1990s, I asked about the Franciscan Federation. I was told,
“Federation is only for vowed sisters.”
I remember the sense of rejection I felt, but it was no different from other rejections along the
way to finding my place in the world.
As my career took shape through the academic world, I found my people in many different
circles of like-minded, tender-hearted Franciscan sisters, friars, laity, and many more non-
affiliated tender-hearted people I sensed to be “Franciscan.”
When I was first invited to attend a Franciscan Federation conference in 2019 to represent CFIT
(The Commission on the Franciscan Intellectual-Spiritual Tradition), I was excited to see what
the Federation was all about. When I was invited to present my work on lay Franciscans at
another Federation conference in 2023, I felt I could contribute to the Federation and thoroughly
enjoyed the animated discussions in and after the sessions I offered on laity in the Franciscan
tradition.
While walking in the Redwoods groves of northern California with Sara Marks, a conversation
led to her asking me if I would consider serving on the Board of Directors for the Federation.
“Are you kidding? “YES,” I said, thinking all the while, this is coming full circle with the 13 th
century, the people I have studied since I was young. Now it’s time to live into this fully.
In August at the first Board of Directors meeting that I attended, I said yes to serving the
Federation. This has been my calling for a good long time: to live this counter cultural path and
to live it authentically. I feel both humbled by the work ahead and charged to give voice to the
counter cultural way that is truly “Franciscan.”
