Forest Lake parishioners embrace Secular Franciscan Order with seven new members

Karan Blackmer, 54, of St. Peter in Forest Lake said that as she enters into the Secular Franciscan Order, she is responding to God’s call to live fraternally, dive more deeply into her faith, and serve and sacrifice for others.

A fellow parishioner, John O’Brien, 47, hopes his profession into the Secular Franciscans might be a springboard into volunteering with youth, perhaps starting a prayer group and renewing others’ appreciation for the sacraments. A third parishioner, Lyn Palachek, 72, trusts that the Lord is working through all of them toward something still larger in scope.

All three were among seven members of St. Peter accepted at a special Mass July 18 into the Secular Franciscan Order’s St. Pio of Pietrelcina Fraternity, with Archbishop Bernard Hebda presiding and a Conventual Franciscan friar, Father Matthew Malek, concelebrating.

“I was thrilled to be invited to be part of this, even though I’m not a Franciscan,” the archbishop said in his homily. “I love St. Francis. It’s beautiful, I think, that the local bishop would have the opportunity to be here and to really give thanks for the witness of the members of the Secular Franciscan community in this archdiocese. To recognize the way in which you continue to bless his local Church with your witness in the life of St. Francis in a very quiet way, in a very secular way, that is the leaven in our society.”

Fraternities are the smallest unit of the international order that St. Francis of Assisi founded 800 years ago, along with his earlier founding of the men’s Order of Friars Minor and the women’s Order of St. Clare. Often, about a dozen to 40 people make up a fraternity and meet as a group at least once a month for prayer, study, service and social time. There are eight fraternities in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, including one each in Bloomington, Coon Rapids, Forest Lake, Inver Grove Heights, Prior Lake and St. Paul, and two in Minneapolis.

All fraternities are part of the Queen of Peace region, which currently includes about 400 people in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and parts of Nebraska and Wisconsin. Regions report to the Secular Franciscan Order USA, which reports to the international order led by a general minister — currently Tibor Kauser of Hungary — who reports directly to the pope.

Members of the secular order are part of the Franciscan family of priests, brothers and Poor Clares of the Franciscan religious orders, but they do not take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They make a lifelong, public profession to live in the spirit of St. Francis, in humility, simplicity and service. Franciscans are not unique in having a lay component to a religious order, but they are the only canonically established third order begun by the founder of a particular religious order, St. Francis, said Kathy Taormina, the Queen of Peace region’s spiritual assistant, a member of St. Bonaventure in Bloomington and formation director at St. John XXIII Fraternity of the Secular Order of Franciscans, also in Bloomington.

The class of seven at St. Peter participated in nearly three years of preparation that included reading books about St. Francis, learning the order’s rules and way of life and about the wider Church, while praying with Scripture and discussing their faith together once a month.

It is an unusually large number of new members, said Kathy Fraser, St. Peter’s business administrator and St. Pio fraternity’s minister. Often, a fraternity might bring in two or three people at one time, she said. With the seven additional members, the St. Pio fraternity numbers a dozen people.

As part of the ceremony, the seven, which also included Cheryl Mancini, Bruce Nolden, Christine Milam and Kris Rehfeld, renewed their commitment to their baptism and confirmation promises and pledged in their daily affairs to live in the spirit of St. Francis as an example to others. As a fraternity, they will help choose a ministry or ministries they can support with corporal works of mercy, part of the order’s call to service.

Fraser, who has been a Secular Franciscan since 2009, helped bring the order to St. Peter three years ago in hopes of building up the fraternity. “St. Peter is a spiritually strong parish,” Fraser said. “We have a lot of committed people here.”

Blackmer said Fraser asked if she was interested in joining the order. “At that first meeting, it just felt right,” Blackmer said. “It was really the small group discussions. We dived into things.”

Fraser said she was first drawn to St. Francis by his love of animals. The order also provides a deep, shared spirituality and love, including love for the Church, she said.

Palachek said she heard about the order in recent years, and knew it was for her. “I’ve had to live this long in order to be ready. It is my time now.” And O’Brien said he had been considering consecrated life, but that didn’t appear to be working out, when Fraser asked him about the secular order. “I really wanted to do something with my faith,” he said. “It was, ‘How do I put that into action?’”

In his homily, Archbishop Hebda said the Holy Spirit has enriched the Church and the order’s seven new members, who benefit spiritually even as they serve the Church, which finds itself in challenging times.

“We live in a difficult time, when the Church is in need of such tender loving care,” the archbishop said. “To have people that are committed like St. Francis to rebuilding the Church, not just in terms of a rundown chapel, but really in terms of the Church that’s made up of living stones. I encourage you to continue building the Church, to be faithful witnesses to the charism of St. Francis, to be faithful to the teachings of the Church, those teachings that Jesus so much desired to pass on not only to his disciples, but to us, 2,000 years later.”