Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Fr. Tim Kulbicki, OFM Conv. has been busy of late beginning the process of helping the friars to “receive” the new Constitutions. He presented at two academic occasions: on the Feastday of the Faculty of St. Bonaventure on “Narbonne and Nemi: Bonaventure’s Franciscan Constitutions and the New Ones,” and at a conference on the particular law of the Order sponsored by the General Procurator “The Criteria and Process for the Revision of the Constitutions;” both will eventually be published. He also presented workshops to the friars of the Custody of the East in Büyükdere (Turkey) and Sin-El-Fil (Lebanon), and to the friars of the Sacred Convent in Assisi; he will do the same next month in Dar-Es-Salaam for the friars of the Custody of Tanzania. His commentary on the new Constitutions (co-authored with Friar Robert Leżohupski, OFM Conv.) was recently published by the Friars’ Press of Niepokalanòw, and is being translated into several other languages.
Read more on on the March 24th “Day of Prayer and Fasting in Memory of Missionary Martyrs” celebrated in Turkey, as well as the March 15th icon blessing: “Turkey: Missionary Martyrs’ Day“
+Fr. Canice (Donald) Connors, OFM Conv. was born in Hazelton, PA, December 3, 1934, and passed away on March 17, 2019. He was the son of the late James and Elizabeth (née Roarty) Connors. In addition to his Franciscan family he leaves his brother James and his wife Christine Connors of Fayetteville, NY, a sister, Dolores Cea, sister-in-law Mary Ann Anderson and 10 nephews and nieces, as well as several great nephews and nieces. He was predeceased by his brother Robert Connors.
Fr. Canice entered the Franciscan Friars Conventual Novitiate in Middleburg, NY, on August 15, 1954. He professed his Temporary Vows on August 16, 1955 and his Solemn Vows on September 27, 1958. Fr. Canice was ordained to the priesthood on May 27, 1961.
After his ordination, Fr. Canice attended The Catholic University of America and received an M.A in Philosophy, in 1962. He attended the University of Ottawa, from 1962-1963, receiving a M.A. in Psychology. Fr. Canice served as teacher and Headmaster at Canevin High School in Pittsburgh, PA from 1964 to 1975. During that time, from 1969 to 1971, he also studied at the University of Pittsburgh and he was awarded a Ph.D. in Psychology, in 1971.
A man of dauntless energy, Fr. Canice served in the Chancery of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, from 1975 – 1979. Using his skills in Psychology, Fr. Canice was asked to be the Director of Southdown Institute, in Holland Landing, Ontario, Canada, where he served from 1979 to 1986. After serving a year (1986-1987) as Rector of St. Anthony-on-Hudson, in Rensselaer, NY, Fr. Canice was asked to be the Pastor of Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Winston-Salem, NC, where he served from 1987 to 1992.
Returning to the use of his skills in Psychology in 1992, Fr. Canice became the Director of St. Luke’s Institute in Silver Spring, MD, where he worked until, in 1997, when Fr. Canice was elected as Minister Provincial of the Immaculate Conception Province. This was ministry that he offered until 2005.
Fr. Canice was a well-respected Guest Speaker in both the U.S and Canada. He received the Annual Touchstone Award in 1997, which is the President’s Award of the National Federation of Priests Council, given to one whose service in the Gospel of Jesus Christ exemplifies the goals and purposes of the NFPC. Fr. Canice was the Vice-President and President of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) and a member of the Board of Directors from 2001 – 2004.
From 2005 to 2008, Fr. Canice served as the Rector of the Franciscan Church of Assumption, in Syracuse, NY. For health reasons, in 2008 Fr. Canice resigned from this position and was assigned to St. Bonaventure Friary, Toronto, Canada. Despite his illness, he became the effective leader of “Tea and Theology” discussion groups in Toronto. As his health declined, Fr. Canice was transferred in 2015 to Mercy Nursing Facility at Our Lady Victory, Lackawanna, NY. For most of his time there, he was still able to minster the sacraments to his fellow residents. Sister Death called him home on March 17, 2019.
Fr. Canice will lie in state at St. Francis of Assisi Church, Hamburg, NY 14010 from 4:00 – 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 21, 2019, with a Franciscan Wake Service at 7:00 p.m. On Friday, March 22, 2019, a Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 11:00 a.m. Interment will be in St. Stanislaus Cemetery, Buffalo, NY after a repast in St. Francis of Assisi Parish Hall. A Memorial Mass will take place at Immaculate Conception Church, Fayetteville, NY, in the Spring. Memorial Donations may be made to the Franciscan Education Burse, 12300 Folly Quarter Road, Ellicott City, MD 21042, or to Francis House, 108 Michaels Avenue, Syracuse, NY 13208.
Funeral arrangements are by Lakeside Funeral Home, Hamburg, NY.
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Funeral Homily for +Friar Canice Connors, OFM Conv. Delivered by Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv. St. Francis of Assisi Church, Athol Springs, New York 22nd March 2019
[Readings: Job 19:1, 23-27 2 Cor. 1:3-7 John 17:20-26]
Upon learning of the death of Friar Canice Connors, many church leaders from around the United States, and indeed the world, have written to me with encomiums of praise and expressions of sympathy. One Minister Provincial from afar wrote: “What a giant among us he was! A man of prophetic vision and insight!” This “Giant of the Order” could also be controversial – in substantive matters of great consequence. He could also be “cute” in the Irish sense of the word. As one of his successors in the role of Minister Provincial, I only had one quaint controversy with Canice – about the proper pronunciation of his name. Countless times, I reminded him that the correct Irish pronunciation was CAN-ice, not Can-ICE! He jovially humoured me, conceding to let me keep saying CAN-ice. I suppose the fact that he died on St. Patrick’s Day confirmed that I won the argument!
A genuine Renaissance friar, Canice loved the British-American poet T.S. Eliot. His favourite passage from the “Little Gidding” section of Eliot’s masterpiece Four Quartets was imprinted upon every fiber of Canice’s being: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” We friars of Our Lady of the Angels Province are immeasurably indebted to Canice for applying this “exploration” principle to the whole process of unification between his former Province of the Immaculate Conception and the former Province of St. Anthony.
Canice’s brilliant speech at our Malvern Assembly in 2006 sounded a clarion call for unification – or better stated, “re-unification” – of our two Franciscan province fraternities. In that speech, he carefully traced the close friendship between the early IC Provincial (later General) Friar Dominic Reuter and the founding SA Provincial Friar Hyacinth Fudzinski. For Canice, the “exploration” of re-unification was a process by which the friars of both Provinces would arrive back where they began: “…and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
When I went to visit Canice at Our Lady of Victory Home in Lackawanna immediately upon the conclusion of our 2014 OLA Provincial Chapter of Unification, he was positively radiant hearing every detail about the Chapter and its dynamics. Indeed, Friar Canice’s passion in life was UNITY – unity in its deepest sense – both natural and supernatural – true communion of persons. Today’s Gospel passage – Jesus’s classic Last Supper prayer for Unity – expresses the profundity of Canice’s own prophetic vision: “Holy Father, I pray… that they may all be one, as you Father are in me and I in you, that they… that they may be one, as we are one… that they may be brought to perfection as one” (Jn. 17:20-26, passim).
When Canice as a friar undertook studies for his doctorate in psychology, he began applying this theological principle of unity in new pioneering ways to the broken human condition – particularly to exigencies of vulnerable victims of abuse and violence, as well as to the mysterious dysfunctions of those who perpetrate abuse. During the 1980s and 1990s – in his seven years as Director of Southdown Institute in Ontario, Canada, and in his five years as Director of St. Luke’s Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland – Canice encountered human fragmentation at levels he could have never anticipated. Even though he humbly realized that he could never succeed 100% in putting “Humpty Dumpty together again” as he counselled thousands of broken persons, Canice strove with each for the ideal of reclaiming their human integrity. INTEGRITY, or wholeness, was the new face that God gave to his quest for natural and supernatural UNITY. For Canice, integrity breeds unity, and unity breeds integrity.
God raised up Friar Canice at a critical moment in the history of the Church in the United States and the world. He became a renowned speaker and expert on the sex abuse crisis. Prior to the Dallas Charter of 2001, he courageously challenged the American Bishops to mobilize a plan of action that would safeguard victims of abuse and do justice towards the vulnerable. His methodology of “tough love” never mollycoddled clergy and religious who abused and committed crimes, but nonetheless sought ways for them to confront their own inner darkness and find healing through therapy, prayer, and penance. Throughout those difficult years, Friar Canice never compromised his own integrity. He was no shrinking violet! Sometimes he was like an Old Testament prophet – He called a spade a spade, not an agricultural instrument.
Working with broken humanity year after year takes a heavy toll on the labourer. Friar Canice was no exception to this precept. His work with victims actually forced him to draw out of the depths of his own painful memories the victimization that he himself had suffered at the age of 12 – when a florist in Syracuse, New York sexually abused him. Today’s passage from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians lends understanding to the ways in which God used Canice’s own experience of victimhood as a springboard to compassionate and encourage fellow victims: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). Friar Canice Connors would become an icon of the “wounded healer.”
Throughout his incredibly important and serious ministry, Friar Canice never lost his Irish sense of humour. Because of his association with the Polish-Americans of the former St. Anthony Province, he even spliced Polish jocularity into the mix. In the 1970s, while working in the Baltimore chancery, Canice lived at St. Stanislaus Friary of the former SA Province, where the loud, rough-and-tumble, down-to-earth likes of Friars Cyprian Sondej and Lambert Sidor introduced him to kielbasa, Polish jokes, and card games (whose names cannot be pronounced). Their rapport was fraternity par excellence – and it actually set the stage for Canice’s future work towards the Union of our two Provinces.
In the final phase of his life, Canice bore the cross of suffering – not only in emotional and psychological ways – but physically. His affliction with a paralyzing sclerosis left him utterly helpless, needful of 24-hour skilled care for years. Tribute must be paid to the friars of Toronto, and Hamburg for their loving fraternal attentiveness, and to the parishioners of St. Bonaventure’s in Don Mills (30 of whom traveled here today for the funeral). Canice never ceased singing all their praises to me. With due respect for his former guardians, Canice remarked countless times that Friar Ross Syracuse here in Hamburg was the best guardian that he ever had in his 65 years as a Franciscan Friar Conventual. I also want to pay tribute to our Province Healthcare Director, Mrs. Pat Ashburn, who tended to Canice with such gentle and loving dedication in his years of illness.
During these final years, the two things that infirmity never forced Canice to stop were his praying and his reading. He took great consolation from the Scriptures and his theological exploration of their deepest import. You would see him reading the philosophical works of Heidegger, and the theological tomes of Rahner. What sustained him as a man of spiritual integrity was his ultimate vision of the Resurrection. Today’s first reading from the Book of Job foreshadowed that reality. Its words express Canice’s final hope: “For I know that my Redeemer [Vindicator] lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (Job 19:25-27). He died with this vision.
Just as Friar Canice loved the poetry of T.S. Eliot, he held in highest esteem of all the great English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Indeed, Canice bore an uncanny similarity to Hopkins, who suffered agonizing depression during the final years of his life. Out of his misery in Dublin, where Hopkins died in 1889, there emerged the greatest of all his poems “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection.” This poem both haunted and consoled Canice, the Job figure, throughout all the agonies of his own earthly pilgrimage. Like Job, like Hopkins, Canice’s life was a vale of soul-making – with an eternal destiny to claim. Job, Hopkins, and Canice all knew that their Redeemer lives! O the comfort of the Resurrection! Hopkins’ final lines are the most apt of epitaphs for our Friar Canice:
“In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.”
Wednesday, March 6, 2019: His Lordship – the Right Reverend John Stanley Kenneth Arnold, Bishop of Salford welcomed our (BAP) Blessed Agnellus of Pisa Custos – Fr. Ciprian Budău, OFM Conv., Our Lady of the Angels Province Minister Provincial – the Very Reverend Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv., our Blessed Agnellus of Pisa Custody Bursar – Fr. Rory Doyle, OFM Conv. and Blessed Agnellus of Pisa Friar – Fr. Agnellus Mary Murphy, OFM Conv. to a meeting at his chancellery in Manchester, England. There they discussed various options for the future of the Friars’ ministry at All Saints in Barton (Manchester, England). The BAP Custodial Chapter of 2017 established a Commission to do a thorough study of the Barton fraternal/ministerial complex, where for many years the Greyfriars’ “The Crusader Magazine” had been headquartered. The church is listed as Grade 1 and is considered to be the chief work of the architect Edward Welby Pugin. E.W. Pugin was an English architect, the eldest son of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. It is a remarkably complete example of Victorian Catholic Church architecture in the Gothic style.
Friar Ciprian, Bishop John Arnold, Friar Rory Friar Agnellus Mary
Visit with our friars in Walsingham, England Fr. James Mary McInerney, OFM Conv., Fr. Gerard Mary Toman, OFM Conv. and Bro. Solanus SIMM, OFM Conv.
Bro. Solanus, Friar James and Friar James Mary in front of the Greyfriars’ Friary, at 23 High Street, Walsingham
Inside the friary with Friar Gerard Mary
Friar James warms himself by the coal and timber fire in the 15th-century friary.
Mass was celebrated at the Franciscan Church of the Visitation (Ein Karem). (l-r) Deacon Bruce Becker (Deacon at St. Francis of Assisi), Friar Anthony Francis, and Deacon Ronald Kolonich (Deacon at St. Peter Parish)
Mass was celebrated in the 4th Century Chapel known as the Grotto of Gethsemane (aka Cave of the Olive Press). The crypt holds more than forty 5-8th century graves.
Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Fr. Anthony Francis Spilka, OFM Conv. and several of the parishioners of St. Francis of Assisi Parish (Johnstown, PA), where he serves as pastor, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land the week of January 15-22, 2019. The visit included holy sites in Bethlehem, Capernaum, Tiberias, Cana, Jericho, the Jordan River (where all of the pilgrims renewed their Baptismal commitment), Ein Karem, Emmaus, Nazareth, Tabgha, ending in Jerusalem. There, the the pilgrims visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, walked the Via Dolorosa (Way of the Cross), visited the Antonia Fortress, the Western Wall and the Bethesda Pool (John 5:2-9). The pilgrims returned renewed and greatly moved – walking in the footsteps of Jesus.
Marriage vows were renewed at the Crypt of Franciscan Church at Cana by: (l-r) David & Mary Frances King, George & Carol Pisula and Donna &James Mertes. Friar Anthony Francis took the opportunity to also renew his vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.
Two of our friars are assigned to the San Damiano Friary – Formation House, in San Antonio, TX. The friary is part of the Our Lady of Consolation Province, however as Franciscan Friars Conventual around the world work together as one community, Fr. Gary Johnson, OFM Conv. is assigned there as the Guardian of the friary and as a Formation Director. He is also one of the members of our Definitory.
The other friar of our province living in San Antonio is friar Fabian Adderley, OFM Conv., a simply professed friar in formation for our province who has been busy in his continued studies as well as in ministry at a nearby parish (Holy Redeemer Catholic Church), where he assists by serving as a Catechist and with the RCIA program. He was on hand (at left), on Sunday, February 24, 2019, as the faithful of the St. Cyprian Igbo Community and those of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church gathered to celebrate the 9:00 a.m. Closing Mass for Black History Month, with the Archbishop of San Antonio, Most Reverend Gustavo-García-Siller, M.Sp.S. The Mass was bookmarked by the Saturday night celebration of the parish’s 28th Annual Mardi Gras Gala Fundraiser (below) the evening before, and the faith community again gathering for food and fellowship, after Sunday’s Mass.
Friar Fabian, a native of the Bahamas, was vested in the habit of our friars, on July 19, 2017, along with the other members of the Novitiate Class of 2017, at our Order’s St. Francis of Assisi Friary Interprovincial Novitiate, in Arroyo Grande, CA. He professed his Simple Vows on July 16, 2018, at our Shrine of St. Anthony, in Ellicott City, MD, and he will continue to study in preparation for his Solemn Vow profession in a few years. Please keep him, and all of our friars in formation, in your continued prayers. If you or someone you know would like more information on becoming a Franciscan Friar Conventual of Our Lady of the Angels Province, please contact our Vocation Director, Fr. Russell Governale, OFM Conv. at vocations@olaprovince.org.
Thursday, February 21, 2019: Our Order’s friars of the General Houses, representatives of various tribunals of the Holy See, friends and colleagues gathered at Santi Apostoli Basilica to remember +Fr. Donald Kos, OFM Conv., one year after his death, in the light of his lifetime service to the General Curia and to the Holy See. Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, OFM Conv., +Friar Donald’s long-time colleague and Regent Emeritus of the Apostolic Penitentiary, presided at the Eucharistic liturgy. Apostolic Major Penitentiary Cardinal Mauro Piacenza JCD was scheduled to preside, but had to cancel at the last moment, due to illness. Below is his homily, which was read by Friar Robert Leżohupski, OFM Conv., +Friar Donald’s successor at the Apostolic Penitentiary and a Member of the General Procuration, in which the Cardinal praised +Friar Donald as one who “thought, acted and lived under the light of God,” someone in whose work at the Tribunal “always sought both the glory of God and the care of souls with justly merciful criteria, both attentive to the particulars of the case and to the wider context.”
Homily – Eucharistic Celebration One-Year Anniversary of the Death of +Fr. Donald (Rome, February 21, 2019, Basilica of XII Apostles) Translated by Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Fr. Timothy Kulbicki, OFM Conv.
Mauro Cardinal Piacenza Major Penitentiary Liturgical Texts: Genesis 9:1-13 and Mark 8: 27-33
Today’s Gospel presents us with an instructive contrast.
St. Peter, inspired by the Father, recognizes Jesus as the Messiah, the Chosen of God. Almost immediately afterwards Peter opposes the divine plan by reproving Jesus for speaking about his suffering, rejection and death, such that Jesus severely rebukes him: “Get behind me, Satan! Because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.” How difficult it is to be continuously under God’s light!
St. Peter, happy to have proclaimed Jesus as the Christ and sure of doing so by divine inspiration, certainly believed to be acting under that same inspiration in opposing Jesus’ teaching. One can easily find any number of arguments against such a vision of a Messiah, who must suffer, be rejected, and be killed. It would not be very difficult to show that such things cannot be part of God’s plans.
The first reading presents us with the covenant with Noah, in which God expressly forbids the shedding of blood: “From one person in regard to another I will demand an accounting for human life.” It is therefore not the will of God that someone be killed. By reasoning a bit one can arrive at the conclusion that it was not the will of God that Jesus be killed. You may also point to the prophecies that present the Messiah as someone who will triumph over all his enemies and reign gloriously forever. This is the plan of God! St. Peter had more than enough arguments for rebuking Jesus and telling him that he was introducing a perspective not part of God’s plan: the Son of Man suffering, being rejected by the scribes and the high priests and being killed, apparently did not fit into God’s plan.
But Jesus is completely docile to the plans of God: he knows how to choose which Scriptures are apt for every situation, and how to understand every situation. He recognized from the Scriptures that the Messiah had to suffer (look at Isaiah’s prophecy regarding the Suffering Servant, or the Christ-figures like Abel, Moses, and Joseph). God does not wish death, God does not wish betrayal, but he takes the world as it is. Because the human heart tends to evil, God decided to triumph over evil by assuming it and transforming it with the strength of love. Therefore Jesus could say to Peter: “You do not think in God’s ways but man’s.” It can happen to us as well to begin with a light coming from God but arrive at an end of human perspectives.
It is vital to remain very docile to God and to be attentive to not add human things to His inspirations. Unfortunately we often reason based on our own psychology and human impulses, finding many justifications along the way for that which is merely our own natural inclinations. We can be very rigid, and convince ourselves that we are only doing God’s will; on the other hand, we can be easy-going and convince ourselves that we are imitating the great mercy of God. We must always be attentive and docile to the Spirit of the Lord, seeking to do His will at every moment, avoiding self-delusions. Let us ask the Lord for such docility to follow His will without adding anything of our own, without fear of the difficulties, without departing from the company of Jesus, even when that entails suffering and humiliation.
Fr. Donald, in his generous and professional service to the Holy See, especially at the Apostolic Penitentiary, was in the right place. He fits well within this brief reflection on the Liturgy of the Word. He thought, acted, and lived under the light of God! In his official judgments on the many and wide-ranging cases that daily arrive at the Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary, he always sought both the glory of God and the care of souls with justly merciful criteria, both attentive to the particulars of the case and to the wider context.
I would say that Fr. Donald had the sense of God! While we are not here to eulogize our dear brother but to pray for his eternal rest, we do so with great affection as we try to better ourselves, as we seek to see the things which the Lord wishes to tell us by means of his life.
Fr. Donald received a solid theological formation before his juridical one. Since the juridical one came after the theological one, logically even the juridical became spiritual. By fixing his gaze squarely upon God, in his eternal laws which regulate the world and all of creation, he always avoided the temptation “to live and let live” or to look for a comfortable conformism, both in the difficult post-conciliar years as well as those which came later but were still no easier. The Absolute, with its infinitude ad extra and with its co-eternal norms, was his life criterion, from the observance of which norms flows order, justice, peace, serenity, and that common sense which always characterized him. Just as a mirror reflects images of otherwise unreachable reality, Fr. Donald found in God an entire universe in its varied aspects, with its needs and difficulties for sure, but also with every indication needed for human progress and happiness.
By meeting and judging every eventuality with eternal and unchanging truth, he was able to make pronouncements on an infinity of questions with the security of someone who draws from God the infallible criterion of judgment, sure not of himself but of God, and for this reason incapable of compromise.
By freeing his office of any kind of conceptual aridity, he found in eternal truth the way for his life. This is seen in the fact that every one of his sentences, every one of his opinions, every one of his pronouncements as precise as they were essential, always carried this trademark. He was always in line with God, and when the case called for it, he was always coherent regarding the language of the cross, never easy but always opportune, and under which “the night becomes clear as day.”
Since God was for him the true reference point for everything, Fr. Donald lived the presence of God in a singular way. He made a point of saying “to live the presence of God,” not “to live in the presence of God.” To live “in the” presence of God, beneath his gaze, is to feel oneself the object of both attention and concern, but above all of judgment. It is certainly a wise counsel to remember that God sees us and that nothing escapes his gaze, but the feeling that comes from that is still fear, no matter how holy it might be! To live “the” presence of God, on the other hand, establishes a personal relationship that leads to intimacy and love. To fear God is the beginning of wisdom, but to love Him is the foundation of wisdom itself.
In the regular give-and-takes with Fr. Donald, which in any case always resolved themselves, one came to understand that he clearly grasped in a very Franciscan manner that with God, the smallest things, even the sharpest of them, mean something. With Him nothing is useless or insignificant. In Him “the great and the small are alike.” We share in this incarnation of the divine, without even being able to theoretically explain it: it overturns the parameters of our judgment, it changes our ways of thinking, it fills up our solitude, it makes us believe in the value of things hidden, it provides certainty even against the headwind of uncertainty. God is light, the true light which grants immeasurable value to whatever the human person does in order to temper a person for infinity.
Those who live the presence of God like Fr. Donald did, understand the meaning of simplicity of life, poverty, the fatigue of work, and finally both suffering and death: all is colored by the Paschal Mystery.
Fr. Donald had a clear conviction that God is not beyond any act that we perform or that God is not some kind of disinterested spectator, but rather that God is within what we do, day in and day out of our lives. He is the Eternity which fills all time with Himself; He is the Immensity which is not beyond the place where we currently find ourselves. Fr. Donald knew how to see his life as a mystery, as something filled with infinity because it is filled with God. He experienced in his life the truism that the one who only seeks things will always be suffocated by them, while the one who finds God is infinitely enlightened and fully breathes with both lungs.
By reflecting upon these things one can understand the world Fr. Donald inhabited, and what interior movements might be possible for someone, even in the midst of everyday things.
Did not Jesus tell us: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be?”
Dear Fr. Donald, we pray that you might be with your Treasure for all of blessed eternity, but we also ask you to pray that those of us down here might walk daily both with our feet on the ground and with our heart above where our Treasure is.
Saturday, February 9, 2019: Our Province Custody of the Immaculate Conception of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) celebrated the Silver Jubilee of professed religious life of our brothers Frei Ronaldo Gomes da Silva, OFM Conv., Frei Carlos Roberto de Oliveira Charles, OFM Conv., Frei Donil Alves Junior, OFM Conv. and Frei Ignácio Silva Fábregas, OFM Conv. The Celebration Mass was presided over by the Auxiliary Bishop of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Bishop Roque Costa Souza, and concelebrated with the Bishop Emeritus of Valença, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Bishop Elias James Manning, OFM Conv. The Mass was held in the São Francisco de Assis Mother Church, Rio Comprido, Rio de Janeiro, and attended by parishioners from several parishes assisted by the friars, as well as friends, diocesan priests and other Religious men and women. The festivities continued with a fraternal welcome to all participants with a cake reading: “Our lives will be what our choices are.”
Saturday, February 16, 2019: Our Minister Provincial, the Very Reverend Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv. blessed our newly renovated St. Catharine Friary and Senior Friars Residence in Seaside Park, New Jersey. Friary community pictured left to right: Fr. Michael Lorentsen, OFM Conv., Fr. Thomas More Bahn, OFM Conv., Br. Stephen Merrigan, OFM Conv., Br. Jim Moore, OFM Conv. and Br. Vincent Vivian, OFM Conv. (seated). Not depicted is Fr. Antone Kandrac, OFM Conv., who was feeling unwell that day.
Our Lady of the Angels Province friar, Fr. Tim Kulbicki, OFM Conv. has been busy of late beginning the process of helping the friars to “receive” the new Constitutions. He presented at two academic occasions: on the Feastday of the Faculty of St. Bonaventure on “Narbonne and Nemi: Bonaventure’s Franciscan Constitutions and the New Ones,” and at a conference on the particular law of the Order sponsored by the General Procurator “The Criteria and Process for the Revision of the Constitutions;” both will eventually be published. He also presented workshops to the friars of the Custody of the East in Büyükdere (Turkey) and Sin-El-Fil (Lebanon), and to the friars of the Sacred Convent in Assisi; he will do the same next month in Dar-Es-Salaam for the friars of the Custody of Tanzania. His commentary on the new Constitutions (co-authored with Friar Robert Leżohupski, OFM Conv.) was recently published by the Friars’ Press of Niepokalanòw, and is being translated into several other languages.
+Fr. Canice (Donald) Connors, OFM Conv. was born in Hazelton, PA, December 3, 1934, and passed away on March 17, 2019. He was the son of the late James and Elizabeth (née Roarty) Connors. In addition to his Franciscan family he leaves his brother James and his wife Christine Connors of Fayetteville, NY, a sister, Dolores Cea, sister-in-law Mary Ann Anderson and 10 nephews and nieces, as well as several great nephews and nieces. He was predeceased by his brother Robert Connors.
Saturday, February 9, 2019: Our Province Custody of the Immaculate Conception of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) celebrated the Silver Jubilee of professed religious life of our brothers Frei Ronaldo Gomes da Silva, OFM Conv., Frei Carlos Roberto de Oliveira Charles, OFM Conv., Frei Donil Alves Junior, OFM Conv. and Frei Ignácio Silva Fábregas, OFM Conv. The Celebration Mass was presided over by the 
Saturday, February 16, 2019: Our Minister Provincial, the Very Reverend Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv. blessed our newly renovated St. Catharine Friary and Senior Friars Residence in Seaside Park, New Jersey. Friary community pictured left to right: Fr. Michael Lorentsen, OFM Conv., Fr. Thomas More Bahn, OFM Conv., Br. Stephen Merrigan, OFM Conv., Br. Jim Moore, OFM Conv. and Br. Vincent Vivian, OFM Conv. (seated). Not depicted is Fr. Antone Kandrac, OFM Conv., who was feeling unwell that day.
