January 2025 Newsletter

From the National Office

In many ways, 2025 is off to an incredibly challenging start. I have heard so many people say that January has already felt months long. Between the humanitarian disaster in the Middle East and the fires in Southern California, and the recent ICE raids and the airline crash in DC, it can often feel hopeless.

Yet this Lunar Year of the Snake – which began on January 29th this year, into what is already both our Jubilee Holy Year and the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures – is perhaps granting us an amazing opportunity for renewal. By shedding, as the snake does, we can rid ourselves of the proverbial old skin, shed ourselves of what holds us back, negativity, despair, hopelessness. The Canticle’s beautiful words are a clear recognition of all of creation living fully, seasonally, and in harmony, shedding as they go, in preparation for the next season. We too can embrace a new beginning, with gratitude and joy, to be the Pilgrims of Hope that Pope Francis calls us to be.

And it is indeed a time of renewal and hope for the national office. The search for a new Executive Director is nearly at its end, and we will have a new person in place by the end of February, if not earlier. I have been asked by the Board of Directors to extend my term as the Interim Executive Director until March 31st, to help transition the new Executive Director into the role. And in gratitude, Fify Juliana has agreed to continue on indefinitely (part-time) to help with administrative duties regarding membership and finances. She has been such a tremendous help for the office, we are so thankful for her YES. Step by step, we are moving forward as an organization, implementing much of what we heard last year in our listening and learning sessions.

Last week, we had our Membership Forum with Sr. Mary Beth Ingham, CSJ. It was a great event with about 250 people in attendance. Sr. Mary Beth left us with much to reflect on in regard what it means in these times to move into the future as Franciscans. If you were unable to join us in person, the recording will be available next week for free for all Federation members.

And then on February 23rd, we will be hosting our Annual Virtual Retreat, this year our facilitator is Br. Bill Short, OFM. It promises to be another great gathering, so please don’t miss it. If you haven’t done so yet, please register HERE, all Federation members get a deep discount on the fee. If you’re unable to join us live online that day, please complete the registration form and we will email you the video of Br. Bill’s talk after the retreat.

Finally, we are continually working to improve the website. We have a small but mighty group of volunteers who are working tirelessly to editing, improve, and grow it, so if it’s been awhile since you have seen the website, please take a look. In particular, our new networks section and our ever evolving list of resources are impressive. See them here: Franciscan Federation.

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House of Discernment

The House of Discernment, which began in 2019 as part of the Vocation Ministry of the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Neumann Communities, is an intentional community in Pittsburgh, PA that supports women in their discernment. In 2023, we were joined by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Baden in this ministry, who now help us to build a stronger community life and offer some financial support. There have been 13 women who have participated in the program, including another religious sister who was seeking intentional living.

The House of Discernment also has outreach programs for men and women who are seeking to grow in their faith in a supportive community. Prayer services, spiritual programming, and fun social events provide a supportive atmosphere for spiritual growth, both for those who reside at the house and for all those who visit.

The House of Discernment is also part of the Franciscan Intentional Communities Network (FICN), which supports existing intentional communities and helps establish new ones. If you have questions or want more information, visit the FICN webpage or contact Sr. Caryn Crook, OSF at ccrook@sosf.org.

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Get Involved with the Federation!

Member Engagement Commission’s Franciscan Connection Circles

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Events

Annual Virtual Retreat

Please join us on Sunday, February 23, 2025, for 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.

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The Intergenerational Eco-Justice & Spirituality Network

The Intergenerational Eco-Justice & Spirituality Network (IEJSN) is a Franciscan and interspiritual ecology-based action network, focused on supporting youth and young adults in building a transformative relationship with creation. IEJSN recognizes and values land-based and indigenous wisdom as we navigate uncharted times of growing climate change and injustices related to race, gender, age, and socioeconomics.  The network began in 2021 through conversations about our concerns for our endangered Earth within the context of the spiritual role that Francis and Clare of Assisi and indigenous peoples carry for intergenerational, inspirational work.  Guided by a steering committee, the IEJSN hosts monthly gatherings on zoom where participants can meaningfully deepen spirituality in community with others who care about ecology and eco-justice.  The next gathering will be on Tuesday, February 4^th @ 2pm PT / 5pm ET. 

For more information and resources, please visit the IEJSN webpage. And to sign up to receive updates, please email us at: IEJS.network@gmail.com 

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Sharings from Congregations

Full Circle

By: Michael Krueger

I was first introduced to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in La Crosse, WI as a college student while attending Viterbo University. Nearing graduation (2010), and uncertain of where I would end up, I knew that I wanted to stay connected to a community that had challenged, encouraged, and offered me opportunities of encounter. And so, not long after graduating, I became an affiliate. My time at Viterbo University, and by extension through many of the jobs that I held afterward – coordinating a Catholic Worker house, directing a home for adults with developmental disabilities, organizing student service and volunteer experiences – all led me back to affiliation and this call to deeper connection.

In my current role as Director of Affiliation, I’ve had the opportunity to come full circle. My first job with the FSPA, nearly 20 years ago, was working in the dish room at St. Rose Convent while a student. Much has changed during these last 40 plus years that affiliation has been around. Many of the discerners who I now meet are drawn to affiliation not because of a relationship with a sister (as was the case historically); rather, there is a desire to connect and a yearning to be a part of a community that is rooted in prayer, but responsive to the needs of the world. Affiliation is open to anyone, and I have had the ongoing privilege of meeting people from across the country from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences who each, in their own way, are drawn to affiliation and its message of Franciscan identity and inclusion.

What I find so remarkable is that much like religious life, affiliation will continue to change and adapt as we go forward. It is not static, and much of what we do is rooted in the moments of this day – responding to the needs of our immigrant community, learning and unlearning our connection to the land, encountering brokenness (often times our own), being vulnerable to one another and providing space for others to speak. At times, there can be a longing for what once was, but I have found that with change and uncertainty, I am invited to think differently, and the circle that we are a part of widens to include not what once was, but what can be.

Michael Krueger is the Director of Affiliation for the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in La Crosse, WI and has been an affiliate with the sisters for almost 14 years. There are currently around 240 FSPA affiliates throughout the United States. To learn more about affiliation, read a recent Franciscan Journey newsletter from January or October.

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Redwood Sisters’ Hospital Reveals Their Heart

By: Melissa Martin, Archivist for the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity, St. Francis Province of Redwood City, CA

It is always exciting when a research request comes across an archivist’s desk, leading to more discoveries about the congregations we serve. Recently, I was fortunate to be contacted by Wini Jackson, advocate in service, Los Angeles County, California. Wini had viewed a TV news segment honoring obstetrician Dr. Wilburn Durousseau for his 55-year service to women, communities of color, and the underserved of Southern California. During his career, he delivered more than 10,000 babies.

Dr. Durousseau is the son of Dr. Kathleen Jones-King, also an obstetrician and one of the first African American physicians to work at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, California. Our Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity opened this hospital in 1945. For many years Dr. Jones-King served the community in and around the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She earned her medical degree at Howard University in 1931.

On Nov. 11, 1945, Dr. Jones-King, along with 56 other prominent physicians, met in the unfinished hospital building to begin organizing a medical staff. Monsignor Thomas O’Dwyer of the Los Angeles Archdiocese recruited the Sisters of St. Francis to open the facility at the request of community leaders. St. Francis Hospital was established to address the population growth of southeast Los Angeles after World War II.

Sister Noella Dieringer was entrusted with overseeing the hospital’s completion and staffing. She was dedicated to accepting all patients and hiring without regard for race or ethnicity—a heroic act during that time. Her policy became widely known when a white patient, finding herself in a room with an African American woman, asked, “Do I have to stay in a room with her?” Sister Noella replied, “Oh no. You can go to another hospital!” In 1965 during the infamous Watts race riots, St. Francis Hospital provided round-the-clock services to the injured. These stories offer exemplary testimony to the hard work and dedication of our Sisters to serve those in need. I’m sure that countless residents in the Los Angeles area feel gratitude to Drs. Durousseau and Jones-King, as well as the Sisters of St. Francis, for their life-giving contributions through the generations.

[Reprinted with permission from the Franciscan Central Archive’s Newsletter Troubadour, Winter 2025. Click here to read more about the Franciscan Central Archive.]

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From the Franciscan Family

Franciscan Action Network Immigration Webinar

Join FAN staff and friends on Tuesday, February 4 @ 4 pm PT / 7 pm ET for an evening of learning and discussion about immigration, including current developments, what is likely to happen next, and how all can support immigrants/refugees going forward. There will be a brief presentation, followed by a panel discussion with leaders in immigration advocacy and plenty of time for questions. Register HERE.

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Online Certificate in Franciscan Studies

A four-course online certificate program, designed to:

• Provide a unified understanding of the Franciscan Tradition.
• Prepare students to form Franciscan experiences in their personal and professional lives. 
• Strengthen students’ relationship with Franciscan history.
• Discover applications to everyday life situations in today’s world.

More information and registration is HERE.

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Franciscan Media

You’re probably familiar with the Franciscan Media’s resource on the Saint of the Day. But do know about their resource called the Minute Meditation? As its name implies, these are very short daily reflections written by a different person each day, on a topic that is brief yet meaningful.

Sign up or read the Minute Meditations HERE.

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Franciscan Thoughts…

Mother Juana de la Cruz

By: Br. Kevin Elphic

In September of the year 1620, a small group of Franciscan women from Spain arrived at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. They were midway on their journey to the Philippines where they would establish the Philippines’ first Poor Clare convent. One of these women, Sor Ana, wrote down and described their visit to the Shrine, making her description one of the earliest accounts of the Shrine written by a woman in Spanish, the first ever by a nun. Writing about Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, Sor Ana and her companions were heirs to a heritage of writing women, St. Clare having been the first woman to write a Rule of Life. Even more so, two of their company had originated from the Monastery of Our Lady of the Cross, a Third Order community south of Madrid which was famed for its foundress, Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534) who had preached an ongoing series of sermons, which her community eventually complied into the book, El Conhorte, organizing her 72 sermons according to the liturgical calendar’s feast days. As Sor Ana chronicled their journey across Mexico, the sisters continually encountered devotion to Mother Juana already present in Mexico– New Spain as it was then known. In her writings “Sor Ana portrays the widespread devotion in the Americas to Juana de la Cruz, which spanned race and class.” Putting pen to paper, “Sor Ana documented the cult of ‘santa’ Juana in the New World” (from the book Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire by Sarah E. Owens, p. 44).

If Mother Juana’s fame was so well known throughout Mexico at the start of the 17th century, one might wonder why she is not better known today. The year before these women arrived in Mexico, Juana’s cause for canonization had begun. In 1588 Pope Sixtus V had set up the office that would become the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. However, only 9 people were subsequently canonized over the next thirty years. Then in 1622, Pope Gregory XV canonized 5 individuals in one ceremony with the transept erected for the occasion in St. Peter’s Basilica notably paid for by King Philip IV of Spain. Eight years later Mother Juana would go on to be declared “Venerable,” but then her process stalled when the supporting documentation for her cause was lost. Traveling across Mexico in 1620 however, Sor Ana and her companions had found that “there was a great devotion to Juana de la Cruz everywhere they went” (from the book Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire by Sarah E. Owens, p. 54). with locals clamoring to touch the rosary beads of Mother Juana they had brought with them on their journey. The precious rosary bead relics were even brought out to calm a looming squall that threatened their ship on their subsequent trip from Mexico to the Philippines. While the Sisters made it safely to establish their new convent in the Philippines, Mother Juana did not make it to canonization in the 17th century.

However, in November of last year, Pope Francis– using what the Vatican called an “equipollent” or equivalent beatification, declared Mother Juana to be “Blessed.” The Archdiocese of Toledo Spain had petitioned the Vatican to move her cause forward given the longevity of her cult and the continuous history of faithful devotion to her sanctity. Notably, Mother Juana’s story actually begins before her birth. Her hagiography recounts that as God was initially creating her, the Virgin Mary intervened. God had been forming her originally as a male, but at Mary’s request, God formed her into a female so that she might eventually join and reform a convent. Mother Juana was subsequently born near Madrid, Spain and was dedicated as a child by her mother to Our Lady, under the title of St. Mary of the Cross. Young Juana fled
an arranged marriage and journeyed to the destined, nearby convent, seeking admission there. She was accepted, professed, and eventually elected as their Abbess. Juana oversaw the transition of this women’s community to adopting and following the Third Order Franciscan Rule, thereby carrying out Mary’s intentions for her. Juana was befriended by Cardinal Cisneros, who saw to it that her convent had printed translations of the writings of other Franciscan women, notably those of St. Clare and St. Angela of Foligno. Mother Juana ensured that her Sisters studied these writings, even having them read aloud for the benefit of the illiterate Sisters.

Like St. Francis, Juana had the stigmata, and– further like him –she preached on the life of Christ. Her sermons were so impactful, that even king and cardinal came to hear her speak. Uniquely, Juana weaves intentionally gender-inclusive imagery into her descriptions of God. Speaking of Christ, she explains that Christ “intercedes for us continually before the Father, like a most pious mother who desires to save us and bring to birth our souls so that her passion and torments are not in vain.” She then puts these words in the mouth of Christ: “I am your true and good and pious…Mother.” Centuries before the importance of gender-inclusive language was championed, Mother Juana was preaching an intentionally gender-accessible Savior, who spoke to each according to their need: “All those who seek in me a father will find in me a father. And those who seek in me a mother, will find in me a mother. And those who seek in me a husband, will find in me a husband. And those who seek in me a bride, will find in me a bride. And those who seek in me a brother or a friend or a neighbor, or a companion, likewise will find in me everything they desire, inasmuch as in me is true love and delight.” (Sermon 62) In her Sermon on the Trinity, to help explain the theological concept of perichoresis, she describes that the Father is “eternally pregnant with the Son” and the Son is “eternally pregnant with the Father.”

The genius of Juana was in her ability to effectively communicate her faith and theology through images and metaphors easily accessible to her audiences. The inner life and relationships of the Trinity she described as a loving dance. The Holy Spirit she explained as a skilled seamstress, who wove together the humanity and divinity of Christ in the garment of the Incarnation. It is little wonder that Mother Juana’s spiritual daughters found great devotion to her everywhere they went. Juana’s convent and community of women continues to this day in its same location in Spain. Locally she is referred to as “Santa Juana” and each spring pilgrims faithfully recreate her journey from her birthplace to the convent she joined, praying and singing as they walk in procession together. Though small in number now, the Sisters remaining at her
convent continue to foster devotion to Mother Juana and rejoiced at the Holy Father declaring
her “Blessed.” She is an exemplary Third Order Franciscan!

Read this article in US Catholic to learn more about Mother Juana: Santa Juana’s Marian Sermons Reveal her Pastoral Heart.

Br. Kevin Elphick is a Tertiary of the Friars of the Atonement. He works full time in the field of suicide prevention and serves on the Commission for Life & Mission of the Franciscan Federation. His chapter on Mother Juana can be found in the 2020 book published by the Franciscan Institute, Franciscan Women: Female Identities and Religious Culture, Medieval and Beyond.

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