Our Life
Capuchin Franciscans
We Capuchins are a group friars or brothers, living in community after vowing to live a religious life. The word friar comes from the Latin frater, which literally means “brother”. Capuchins are a type of Franciscan friar. We, like all Franciscans, strive to live like our founder, St Francis of Assisi. His lifestyle attracted others to join him in dedicating their lives to prayer and the service of the poor. This group of followers then went on to officially become the Franciscan Order in 1223.
Our Capuchin Community
Capuchin Franciscans live in communities. A local Capuchin Fraternity can be made up of any number of friars, but in Great Britain, the average number of brothers living together is five.
Living in fraternity is more than just living in the same space. We depend on each other to live together. This includes cooking, shopping, cleaning and anything else needed to keep our home in order. Of course, we also pray together and work together.
Each brother can bring his own skills to the fraternity, whether it is cooking, organising, preaching or praying. Living as brothers means that we have to look out for each other. This sometimes has its challenges, as with all families, and we have to work at keeping a peaceful community.
The “Guardian” of each fraternity is responsible for keeping the peace! We discuss and decide most things as a group, but the Guardian has the ultimate say and must always act for the good of the whole fraternity.
Much of our life and of each day are spent in prayer. St Francis told his first friars that everything should come second to prayer and devotion – it is what guides everything that we do. We pray throughout each day, starting with personal reflection and the Holy Mass, and following with other communal prayer in the middle of the day and the evening.
We pray along with you too, praying the Divine Office as a community each day. Not all friars are priests, but those that are offer Mass for the rest of us. They also offer masses for the parishes in our care so you may also be able to pray with us there.
Personal prayer is also very important to us. Our relationship with God as a loving father and with Jesus as our brother is developed through spending time in prayer, with the help of the Holy Spirit. This not only carries us through our life-long vocation journey, but also helps us in how we approach others.
Our life of prayer
Our life of ministry
Each of us bring our own unique gifts and skills to the community that we live in. Different communities too, require certain specialist ministries depending on where they are in the world and the kinds of people they serve. This regularly changes, as the needs of the world around us change.
Here in Great Britain, we are currently serving people on the margins, people who are sick, people who suffer injustices, people in other countries, people in need of spiritual direction and those people in our parishes. St Francis was called to serve those who were excluded from society. Pope Francis, like his namesake, calls all of us to care of those on the margins of our modern societies, particularly those who feel rejected or isolated.
Other ways in which the brothers are called to serve include those working with the environment, in schools, on retreats and for the Poor Clares Sisters.
A day in the life of a friar
5.30 am: I awake with the morning chorus of the birds praising the Lord for his new day. So too, I begin to praise the Lord with the morning prayer of the Church from my Brievary and I read and reflect on the Word of God for the day.
6.30am: I shower and put on my habit. I have a drink of honey water, a bowl of All-Bran, mixed muesli and a banana.
7.30am: I head into the Friars Chapel where the brothers gather for morning prayer and meditation. We have mass at 9am so I help my brothers in getting ready, opening up the church and preparing the altar.
9.30am: After Mass, I grab a cup of strong black coffee and have one of those lovely French Madeira cakes! I check my emails and answer any messages.
11.00am: Around this time I have meetings, sometimes on Zoom or I have a telephone meeting I have arranged with someone who wants to talk about a particular problem or would like to ask questions about some scripture they have read.
12.15pm: This is the time for midday prayers.
12.30pm: Lunchtime! This is when the brothers gather together for our main meal of the day. Sometimes it is soup to start. We often have delicious carrot and garlic soup – very healthy and very smelly!! This is followed by something like steak and kidney pie, potatoes, vegetables and gravy.
2.00pm: In the afternoon I may have work to do in preparing for giving a retreat, or I may be doing a funeral liturgy at the crematorium, or I may be taking Holy Communion to a sick parishioner. But there is always time to have a cup of tea and biscuit with one of my brothers!
5.00pm: Now we have evening prayer with meditation in the Friars Chapel. We also pray the Rosary.
6.00pm: Supper time! We search for what we can find to eat in the fridge or in the cupboards, today, beans on toast!
7.00pm: Sometimes in the evenings we have meetings, people come to see us, or we prepare candidates to be received into the church.
8.00pm: I go back to my room and listen to some classical music and maybe make a phone call.
9.00pm: The brothers gather together for recreation in our lounge area. We have a TV, many books on the shelves and newspapers delivered. We chat together talking about our days and we have a drink together. We all like to have a packet of crisps or chocolate (or both!) – cheese and onion crisps are a favourite in this community! We enjoy watching films, and recently saw ‘Hidden Figures’ which we all loved and found very inspiring.
11.00pm: Then it’s lights out and time for sleep, and to thank God for his beautiful day.
The Franciscan family
The Capuchin Order is part of a worldwide Franciscan family. For more information:
Worldwide Capuchins: ofmcap.org/en/
Franciscans International: franciscansinternational.org
The Irish Capuchin Province: capunchinfranciscans.ie
OFM Friars Minor: friar.org
Conventuals: thegreyfriars.org
Poor Clares: poorclaresarundel.org
Franciscan Third Order Secular: ofsgb.org
Our partners
We work alongside partners in this country and beyond:
Conference of Religious: corew.org