Children of Father Francis

part of the quiet cohorts of men and women holding the world together behind the scenes:

One recent Friday afternoon in front of the old St. Adalbert's Church in the South Bronx, two young men wearing bushy beards and gray religious robes greeted anyone who happened to be walking down the quiet stretch of East 156th Street. They switched easily between English and Spanish.

"How ya doing today? The church is open, if you'd like to stop in for a few minutes and say a prayer," they'd say. "Jesus is inside."

Some passersby accepted their invitation to the church, some said they were in a hurry. Any response was an opening for conversation, an offering of Catholic literature and a Rosary. With neighborhood kids on their way home from school, the men--members of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal--found themselves tossing a ball and explaining why they wear such long Rosary beads hanging from their rope belts.

Those who went into the church found other friars and a few neighbors praying before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in a simple gold monstrance. The cool, subtly lighted, recently restored church was a place of calm and order amid the squalor and brokenness of the city. Even the bags of food, awaiting the weekly distribution to the poor, were lined up like soldiers in formation.

This was a vibrant Polish parish until the old generation moved out in the 1970s. The South Bronx decayed, crime rose, buildings burned. By the time the parish closed, eight members of the Capuchin Franciscan provinces of New York and New Jersey were contemplating a change in their own lives...