The Slam Dunk Friars

A VISIT TO A FRIARY for any purpose, as a pilgrim, as someone offering help, as someone needing help, or even as a journalist, seeking to learn something to convey to others, is, in the first place a personal experience. So when the celebrated photographer Carlos Reyes-Manzo and I visited the Community of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in Canning Town, East London, I soon forgot that I was there as a reporter. We just were visitors there, like anybody else…

No swearing

The mission began when our Editor, Fr Mario Conte, saw a BBC report on the Internet about a group of American friars dubbed the ‘slam-dunks’ because they taught rootless youngsters in East London to play basketball, no swearing allowed. A ‘slam-dunk’, I was to learn, is a basketball term describing the leap of a very tall man that allows him to push the ball down through the hoop, ten feet up. This is an ‘in-your-face’ feat, a bit like a six over the bowler’s head in cricket. The ‘slam-dunk’ friars were certainly ‘in-your-face’ in this part of London. They were getting the people of this unfashionable and rather deprived area used to the sight of Grayfriars riding on the Underground and walking the streets in their religious habits, rosaries at their waists. They were people who defined poverty as ‘not having friends’, not surprising in a young Order whose charism owed something to Blessed Mother Teresa’s example. Fr Mario asked Carlos and me to go to see them. The community kindly agreed to receive us.
Their Friary is a converted Church Hall, necessarily protected by a wire fence and a locked gate, its principal external features being a beautiful Lourdes Grotto and, close by the door, a life-size painting of Jesus radiating his Divine Mercy, the devotion revealed to the Polish nun, Saint Faustina.

Renewal not reform

I was intrigued to know how this American community came to be in England and, indeed how and when it came to be in America. Friar Angelus explained. The Community of the Frianciscan Friars of the Renewal was established by eight Capuchins in 1987. They are not a reform movement but a renewal. Those eight Capuchins, of whom the best known was Friar Benedict Groeschel, were concerned that in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, there had been losses as well as gains for religious life. Friar Angelus told me that Friar Benedict will not accept that he is the Order’s founder. “I am just one of the eight,” he insists, “just an instigator.”
These eight friars had seen the wearing of the habit disappearing, the carrying and praying of the rosary weakening. They wanted to get back closer to the original charism of Saint Francis, ‘the Seraphic Father’ and so they rooted their new community in the ideals and spirit of the Capuchin reform of the early 16th century. Their first Friary was Saint Crispin’s in the Bronx, New York. They wore the habit, taking the colour grey to distinguish themselves from the other main Franciscan congregations. They pronounced public vows under the Cardinal Archbishop of New York. They lived a fraternal life in common. They worked for personal and communal renewal within the Church. They challenged the values of the world. Their particular signs were material poverty, manual labour, renunciation of immovable property, mature and faithful chastity, active and responsible obedience, living with and engaging in hands-on work with the poor and destitute.
Their spiritual values were unity in commitment to Jesus through contemplative and liturgical prayer, daily Eucharistic adoration, devotion to their Patron, Our Lady of Guadalupe and imitation of Saint Francis and Saint Clare. They evangelised by preaching and other non-parochial ministry.

Renewal spreads

Vocations built up and not just from America. On 28 May, 1999, the community was formally established by the late Cardinal John O’Connor of New York as a Diocesan Religious Institute. In 1990 the Sisters of the Renewal had been established. Including their convent there are now nine houses of the Renewal, seven in New York, one in Honduras and the one here in England.
Some of the vocations to the Renewal were from England. Monsignor John Armitage, Vicar General of Brentwood Diocese, knew Friar Benedict . They talked. Friar Benedict had been “thinking and discerning” about England. In 1999 a group of Renewal friars came over to England for six weeks, Friar Angelus among them. They were soon being asked: “Can you come and preach in our parish?”
In June 2000, at the invitation of Mgr Armitage, and with the ready blessing of Bishop Thomas McMahon of Brentwood, the Renewal friars came and began their work, founding the Saint Fidelis Friary in the parish of Saint Margaret, Canning Town. There is already talk of opening a second friary somewhere else in England.

Social commitment

On the day of our visit Friar Fidelis and Brother Francis were away in the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary and Saint Thérèse, Saltley, Birmingham, where the Saint Fidelis friars were running a nine-day mission.
Friar Angelus showed me round the building and I met several of the local people whom they regularly help, as well as lay volunteers who join in their work. The kitchen was a busy, friendly scene. The friars had been given several boxes of vegetables and guests and volunteers were busy preparing them. I was shown a large space, which is used for a number of missionary purposes, including as a night shelter for the homeless in the harder seasons of the year. This apostolate is rotated with other local Christian churches. No one institution does this demanding work all the time, to guard against burn-out.

Intriguing vocations

 I was intrigued to know the personal story of this quiet American and, as Friar Angelus unfolded it, I realised that it would have made a whole article in itself. He had drifted from the faith, but felt called back to it when his mother died. In 1989 he heard about Medjugorie. Two years later he went there. He began to think about what Our Lady was asking people to do. The prayer, the fasting. Yes, I can do that, he thought. He had a computer science degree, a good job, a good lifestyle, a girl friend. Then one day when they were both at Mass there was an appeal for vocations. The young priest made the life seem so wonderful; the sacraments, ministering to the sick, following Christ. After Mass his young lady said: “You should think about being a priest.” Following a year of discernment, under that priest’s guidance, he felt he did have a vocation, but knew he would need the support of community life. More discerning led him to Saint Francis and then to the Renewal community. It offered a life that was simple, austere, without TV, but full of joy. He embraced it.
Our visit to St Fidelis Priory never felt like an interview, like an assignment. It always felt like a conversation, an encounter. We were guests of Saint Francis. It was his spirit that welcomed us.