Optic-Changing Moments: One Friar’s Reflection on Experiences that Formed My Heart

Optic-Changing Moments:

One Friar’s Reflection on Experiences that Formed My Heart

When I look back across the landscape of my life, I can clearly see that my understanding of the world, and of my own vocation, was not shaped in classrooms, lecture halls, or formal training programs. My “formation” has unfolded instead through encounters: moments when the lens through which I saw life was forever altered. These were not gentle nudges but seismic shifts, optic-changing experiences that redirected the trajectory of my ministry, my spirituality, and my understanding of human suffering and grace.

Some of these moments came early, almost before I had words to describe them. As a college student at Mount Saint Mary’s, Emmitsburg, Maryland, in the early 1980s, I often traveled with Sister Roberta Sobus, DC, performing “windshield surveys” of impoverished communities near Emmitsburg. Together, we visited neglected, poor, and isolated rural and mountainous regions nearby, where residents faced challenges reminiscent of those found in Appalachia. We would quietly observe the structures of daily life: dilapidated homes, signs of generational poverty, unspoken resilience, and then follow these surveys with wellness checks and visits. Something in me awakened in those years: an awareness that ministry begins with seeing, and that seeing requires slowing down enough to let another person’s reality unsettle your own.

That lesson was driven even deeper in 1983, when, as a young diocesan seminarian intern, I had the opportunity during both summer and winter college recesses to live and work alongside Father Joseph Muth, pastor of St. Ann Church in Baltimore. The parish, largely African American, was located in the challenged inner-city neighborhood known as East Baltimore Midway.

In December of that year, I was profoundly shaken when I witnessed the murder of nineteen-year-old Maurice Sturdivant in an alley adjacent to the St. Ann’s rectory, just outside my window. Violence seen on a television screen remains abstract; violence unfolding before one’s ears and eyes hardens into memory. I still recall the overwhelming helplessness and the shock that such tragedy could erupt so close to a place meant to be sanctuary. That moment stripped away whatever naïveté I may have carried and etched into me a lasting conviction: authentic ministry must meet people precisely where life breaks open.

In the summer of 1991, as a student-friar, I was given the extraordinary opportunity to live for three months in a leprosy camp in Ghana, West Africa. There, I lived under the supervision and mentorship of Brother Vincent Vivian, OFM Conv., a man I admired beyond words. Those months became one of the most transformative periods of my life.

I arrived in Ghana as a Franciscan seminarian on missionary internship; I left with a radically transformed understanding of human dignity. The residents of the camp were among the most marginalized people on earth, yet they lived with a depth of faith, humor, and communal strength I had never before encountered. In their suffering, I experienced a profound grace—a living revelation of the Incarnation itself: that God is not found apart from human fragility but intimately present within it. That summer has never stopped shaping who I am and how I understand ministry.

A few years later, as a newly ordained priest at Most Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, New York, I found myself presiding at a steady stream of funerals for young people who had died from AIDS—often complicated by addictions. The grief of their parents and families was raw, complex, and at times suffocating. These were funerals not only for lives cut short, but for relationships burdened with guilt, misunderstandings, and unresolved pain. Standing at the altar in those moments, I learned that priesthood is not about having answers. It is about staying present in the unbearable. Those families taught me that mercy must precede judgment, and that compassion is often the only bridge strong enough to carry a grieving parent across the chasm of loss.

During those same years, I underwent what I often call my “front parlor seminary”.  The rectory parlor became the classroom where real pastoral formation happened. People came with their wounds, doubts, complicated relationships, and moral struggles, and I quickly discovered that no manual existed for these encounters. I learned to listen, to receive, and to take seriously the unpolished honesty of human beings struggling to find their way. In truth, the lessons I absorbed in those front parlors have accompanied me far longer than any theological concept from my formal training.

Then came 1998, and with it the overdose death of Michael Johnson, a 28-year-old parishioner in Brooklyn whose life had been marked by addiction, hardship, and despite it all an unmistakable yearning for God. I had known him for years. His death pierced me in a way few others had. It made addiction no longer an abstract pastoral challenge but an open wound I carried with me. Michael’s death forced me to confront not only the limits of my ministry but the limits of my own heart: how deeply I could care, and how helpless I could feel.

My years in Central America from 1998 to 2000 exposed me to another dimension of human suffering, one rooted in systemic poverty and political instability. Walking through rural villages in Honduras, encountering people who lived with almost nothing yet gave generously from what little they had, I realized how skewed my understanding of wealth and need had been. These travels did not just expand my worldview; they destabilized it, making room for a more authentic compassion.

Years later, in 2008, a moment of profound calm in the Basilica of the Annunciation in the Holy Land City of Nazareth drew me into a surprising experience of the Incarnation—not as doctrine, but as presence. Kneeling in that sacred space, I felt the mystery of God-made-flesh settle into my bones in a way that no theological text had ever accomplished.

In 2014, my visit to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland brought me face-to-face with human evil stripped of all illusion. Walking those grounds, seeing the remnants of so many extinguished lives, I found myself standing in silent confrontation with the capacity of humanity both to destroy and to endure. Auschwitz was not merely a historical visit: it was a spiritual reckoning.

Beginning in 2015, my ministry among the homeless and drug-addicted community in East Baltimore while Pastor of the sister parishes of St. Ann and St. Wenceslaus continued this lifelong education of the heart. Those men and women: imperfect, wounded, often dismissed by society, revealed to me the face of Christ in ways that remain indescribable. Their stories carried both devastation and hope and getting to know them and serving them taught me that the Gospel becomes credible only when it is lived in proximity to the suffering.

In more recent years, another unexpected classroom of the heart has emerged for me: the confessional.  For the past three years, I have served as a confessor at the Shrine of Saint Anthony in Howard County, Maryland. On most days, I sit quietly in that confessional and listen as people entrust me with the most vulnerable corners of their lives. I hear heartaches, perceived weaknesses, addictions that shackle, anger that erodes peace, resentments that linger for decades, and the quiet, persistent ache of those who doubt God’s love or feel unworthy of it.

There are moments when I want to weep with them, moments when the weight of their suffering is palpable. And yet, I count it among the greatest privileges as a priest to be able to speak words of mercy into that space, to assure them, sometimes more than once, sometimes gently, sometimes firmly, that God loves them more than they could ever possibly imagine. Often, I leave the confessional convinced that lives have changed on both sides of the screen: theirs, for having dared to speak; and mine, for having been allowed into that sacred, hidden place. These encounters continue to reshape my heart, reminding me that grace flows most powerfully through honesty, humility, and the courage to begin again.

When I trace all of my most optic-changing life experiences together, they form a kind of spiritual mosaic: unique tiles arranged by providence, each one reshaping how I see the world and how I understand my vocation. They remind me that conversion is not a single moment but a lifelong unfolding. My Christian faith, my Franciscan identity and my priesthood, such as they are, have been sculpted by these encounters: by the poor, the dying, the addicted, the grieving, the forgotten, the sorrowful, the repentant, and the holy. They have been my teachers.

And through them all, a single truth has become clearer with time:

Grace is found not by avoiding the wounds of the world, but by daring to look directly at them, and discovering Christ already there.

Lord Jesus, you entered our world to teach us how to see: how to notice the forgotten, honor the wounded, and recognize your presence in every human story. Open our eyes again today. Turn our wounds into wisdom, our encounters into compassion, and our lives into instruments of your peace. Amen.

The Faith I Was Given, the Wounds I Bear

In May of 1976, this photo of me was taken immediately after I received the Sacrament of Confirmation.  I was a thirteen year old eighth grade student in my Catholic parish school. Just one month after this event, I was sexually assaulted for the first of many times by a clergyman inside of my parish church and rectory. My church was located directly across the street from my family’s home.

The Faith I Was Given, the Wounds I Bear

I write the following narrative not to accuse, not to demand, and not to destroy—but simply to speak my truth. I’ve come to realize that failing to speak becomes its own kind of emotional prison, and that for those who wish to speak truth to power, doing so is the only real doorway to peace—and to justice—too.

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My Truth:

When I was a small child, I learned of the steadfast and tender faith of my ancestors—a faith rooted in tradition and woven into the very fabric of my family’s Catholic life. My mom and dad taught me that, more than they themselves could ever love me, I was loved by God; and that beneath the shadow of God’s wings, I would always be safe. And so, with the trust of a child, I believed this without question.

In my innocence, guided by a trusting and unblemished mind, I believed that those who most represented God on earth were the priests of my church—the men who celebrated our Sunday Masses, visited our school classrooms, often spoke kind words to me, and sometimes affectionately tousled my hair as I waited beside them in the sacristy before serving at the altar.

These same men—so beloved by my parents, grandparents, family, and friends—often came into our home, sharing in our joys, celebrating our happiest moments, and standing beside us during seasons of hardship, suffering, and grief.

But for me, all of that affection, trust, admiration, and unquestioning devotion vanished in a single devastating moment—and was then followed by countless others like it. My innocence and my faith were utterly shattered when, at the age of thirteen, I was targeted, manipulated, and violated by clergymen—men whom, just like those before them, I had admired with nearly all of my heart.

Those dreadful experiences seared my soul and destroyed the trust I had once carried so freely. For every year since those traumatic moments of my youth, they have laid upon the deepest parts of my being a burden of shame, confusion, and false guilt—weights that were never mine to bear. And even now, from time to time, these burdens return like a dark and unwelcome spirit, breaking my peace and unsettling the stability of my mind.

As I journey toward the evening of my life, these memories—and the wounds they left—have resurfaced as a raw and bitter pain. They color nearly every doubt or question I have about the love of God, about those entrusted with proclaiming and witnessing to that love, and about the authenticity of the power structures within the Catholic Church—a Church to which, somehow, I still long to remain loyal. Loyal in the way a child is expected to trust the parents who promised to love their children without condition and without end.

And so once again, I find myself praying and pleading for peace of mind, for healing, and for the strength I need to be faithful and true to that so-called loving God whom, so long ago, I was taught to trust and to believe in with the pure submission of my heart, my mind, and my soul.

God help me, please.

I cannot change what happened to me. I cannot erase the moments that tore my innocence from me, nor the shadows that have haunted my life now for so many years. But I can honor the truth. I can name what was done. I can refuse to lie for the sake of appearances or to protect those who broke what they were entrusted to safeguard. And this not only for my own sake, but also for the sake of others who have been harmed—those abused, neglected, abandoned, or forsaken by a Church or by Church leaders who have failed to live the very mission they were ordained to serve.

And if there is any grace left for me to discover, it will be found not in forgetting, but in living honestly—in refusing to hide beneath the silence that once imprisoned me.

My story is not only a story of harm. It is also the story of one still standing, still questioning, still seeking, still yearning for God despite every reason to turn away. If there is redemption for me, it will be because I dared to SPEAK.

And so…

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A Prayer from the Wounded Heart

O God, if you are indeed there—if your love is not merely a story whispered to children—then look upon me in my weariness and do not turn away. I am tired of carrying memories I never chose, burdens I never deserved, and questions that still echo through the chambers of my soul. If you truly are the God I was taught to trust in my earliest days, then hold me like your child. If you are the healer proclaimed in scripture, then touch the wounds I once hid for too long. If you are the shepherd who seeks the lost, then find me now—in the evening hours of my life—and take me gently back into the trustworthy and oft-proclaimed safety of your fold.

Do not let my story end in bitterness. Do not let my spirit collapse under the weight of what others have done. Give me peace… a peace that has, in truth, eluded me for so many years.

And if you still desire my service to your people—bruised, broken, and weak though I may be—then let me offer it with love. And I ask you: make of it something you can redeem.

Amen.

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A Survivor’s Prayer

May the God who saw me as a child, who walked with me through shadows I did not understand, and who now beholds me in the later years of my life, grant peace to my soul.

May God lift from me the weight that was never truly mine to bear.

May God breathe peace into what has been torn.

And may God gather me, at last, into the love I once believed without doubt, question, or pause.

Amen.

Eucharistic Particles: Reverence, Reality, and the Humility of God

Eucharistic Particles: 

Reverence, Reality, and the Humility of God

A Theological Reflection by Friar Timothy Dore, OFM Conv.

Introduction

Among certain circles of highly “orthodox” and conservative Catholics, there exists an intense concern regarding even the smallest fragments of the Eucharist. Some believe that if a particle of the consecrated host should fall to the ground—however inadvertently—that it constitutes a dreadful event. Such a particle, they argue, must be rescued immediately and the spot “purified,” perhaps with a purificator and with other ritual gestures, to restore reverence.

I am aware of people who hold such convictions with sincerity and devotion. Yet as a Franciscan friar and priest, I find myself drawn to a more incarnational understanding of reverence—one grounded in trust, humility, and joy in the mystery of the Word made flesh.

An Incarnational Perspective

In my mind, it is unnecessary to be anxious over small particles that are practically invisible to the naked eye—those that may find their way into the fibers of a carpet or drift unseen to the floor. Isn’t it absolutely true that Jesus can take care of himself (or to put it in much more colloquial language: “Jesus is a big boy”) and that “he can handle it”?

Christians believe nothing can diminish or take away from the glory of God.  Isn’t this still true if a small fragment of the Body of Christ (i.e., from a Communion host) somehow lands even on a so-called “unclean surface” of one sort or another? What difference does it make? In truth, none at all. Instead of lamenting such an occurrence, perhaps we might consider it to be an opportunity to rejoice in the reminder of what the Eucharist truly is: the Son of God who first entered our world in vulnerability and humility in the womb of a poor, unknown young woman named Mary, and who was born in a stable at Bethlehem and given a resting place in an out of the way and lowly spot while there as a tender and defenseless infant.  And all of this was done in order to demonstrate the Father’s great love!  Jesus was born into lowliness for us—even though we are not perfect, even though we are sinners, and ultimately because he wanted to save us from our own weaknesses, our sins, and even death itself.

If God himself, in the person of the Baby Jesus was content to rest among straw and dust, and even among the fleas and rodents that surely were present in that animal shelter, then the divine presence certainly can endure resting, unseen, in the humble fibers of a carpet or some other similarly modest place. To me, that image is not scandalous—it is rather profoundly beautiful.

Reconsidering Reverence

As a priest who celebrates the Eucharist nearly every day, I know well the importance of treating the sacred species with care and love. Still, if a tiny particle should flick from the paten and disappear, I trust that the Lord who created heaven and earth can take care of himself.

Respectfully, I wish to take issue with those who insist that reverence requires frantic recovery of every microscopic crumb. To me, reverence is not measured by the intensity of our scrupulosity but by the depth of our faith. It can be equally reverent to entrust the fragment to God’s providence, recognizing that the Eucharist is not a fragile object needing rescue but the living Christ who has chosen to dwell among us.

Indeed, to allow that fragment to rest upon the earth is to imitate the very act of God in the Incarnation: the eternal Word becoming flesh and entering into creation’s messiness. That, I believe, is true reverence—imitating the humility of God.

Communion in the Hand

This same principle applies to the ongoing debate about receiving Communion in the hand. Some argue that this practice risks spreading tiny, unseen particles of the Eucharist, perhaps onto clothing, hymnals, pews, and other common objects people touch every day, and that this is irreverent. They therefore conclude that receiving on the tongue is the only proper expression of reverence and of safeguarding these sacred particles.

I can’t help but smile when I hear such reasoning. Who, after all, is the arbiter of reverence? Why would God not wish his people to take the very Body of Christ into their hands, when that same God once allowed his Son to be placed in a manger filled with dirt, hay, and the smells of animals?

To receive Christ in one’s hands is not an act of irreverence—it is a reaffirmation of the Incarnation itself. It acknowledges that God chooses to meet us where we are, in our humanity, in our need, and even in our imperfections.

The Real Issue: Power and Control, Not Reverence

At times, I sense that for some, such fervor may arise less from genuine concern for reverence and more from an understandable human tendency toward control—toward seeking security in rules rather than trust in grace. Beneath the surface of such arguments, there can be a desire to regulate and restrict, to exercise power through fear of sacrilege rather than to inspire love and trust.

But the Gospel reminds us that genuine reverence is born not of control but of freedom—the freedom to trust God’s presence in all things. The same Christ who humbled himself to be born among animals and straw is not offended by the humility of the world he came to redeem.

Conclusion

True reverence for the Eucharist does not reside in anxiety, fear, or hyper-vigilance. It resides in wonder, gratitude, and trust in the One who became flesh for our salvation.

If the Lord of the universe could choose a manger as his first resting place, then surely he can rest peacefully—even unseen—wherever chance or fate may take any part of his Most Sacred Body.

True Eucharistic reverence, then, is not fear but love—love that abides wherever searching and needy hearts hunger and thirst for his presence among us.

The View from my Window

 

 The View from my Window

After recently learning some additional thought-provoking history about where I currently reside at “Folly Quarter” in Howard County, Maryland, I will never gaze upon this view from my friary window in the same way . . .

This is what I see (see first photo above): 

The land up to the top of the hill and ending just before the visible farm buildings has been owned for more than a hundred years by the Conventual Franciscan Friars, the religious community to which I belong.  

The farm buildings are on the property of the University of Maryland Agricultural Farm.  The farm consists of about seven-hundred acres; the friary land three-hundred.  During the 19th century both tracts of land formed the “Folly Quarter,” a portion of Doughoregan Manor, a vast ten-thousand acre estate owned by Maryland Catholic signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton.  

The “Folly Quarter” property was later gifted by Charles Carroll to his granddaughter Emily Caton McTavish (daughter of Mary Carroll Caton and Richard Caton - the wealthy developer of the Baltimore area today known as “Catonsville”).

In 1928, and after the friars purchased their portion of the “Folly Quarter” estate, they built the monastery-like friary structure where today I reside with several other Franciscan Friars.  

The original and recently restored “Folly Quarter” manor house known as “Carrollton Hall,” one-time home of Emily Caton McTavish and her husband John Lovat McTavish, still stands a short distance away from the friary on the property.  

What I have recently learned is that, up until the time of the U.S. civil war, the location of the farm buildings visible from my window once served as an encampment and home to enslaved Americans.  During the course of many years, hundreds of enslaved people who served the Carroll, Caton and McTavish families lived and labored where those farm buildings now stand.  

I now wonder what the ground would say if it could tell us the stories of the lives of those oppressed people who were forced into slavery, yet lived, loved, raised children, labored, had families and friendships, and who died without freedom on the land I now see nearly two hundred years later as I look out my window each morning.

I will never gaze upon this view in the same way . . .

 

Friars Max and Anthony

 

Friars Max and Anthony

 

Friar Maximilian Mary Bernwinkler, OFM Conv., a somewhat timid yet hard-working fifty-nine-year-old Franciscan priest, was known to most people simply as Friar Max. By 1995, he had been pastor of Most Holy Trinity Church in Williamsburg for seven years. The people of the parish loved him greatly. He was dedicated to his ministry, a powerful preacher, a reverent presider at Mass, a genuine “people person,” and truly a gentle soul.

Friar Max was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Before entering the Franciscans and taking a religious name, as was customary in the 1950s, he was known to family and friends as Tommy. His earliest experience of the Catholic faith was instilled in him at St. Joseph Monastery in Irvington, West Baltimore. “The Monastery,” as it was locally known, was a historic church administered by the priests and brothers of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, commonly known as the Passionists.

Irvington was a neighborhood of tree-lined streets, single-family houses, and row homes, populated largely by stable, multigenerational blue-collar and middle-class families. The Monastery and its religious, social, and cultural life were central to many of the Catholic families who lived there. So strong was that parish identity that many residents would simply say they were from “the Monastery” before saying they were “from Irvington.”

Tommy carried that Catholic identity throughout his early years, including his time as a student at downtown Baltimore’s Calvert Hall College, a high school conducted by the De La Salle Christian Brothers, from which he proudly graduated in 1954.

Friar Anthony Mary Abruzzo, OFM Conv., was born the same year as Max and raised in Lackawanna, New York. Before entering the Franciscans and taking his religious name, he was known to family and friends as Vinny. After his initial years in the Order, and throughout most of his active ministry, he would come to be known simply as Brother Anthony. His home parish was St. Anthony of Padua, a proud Italian-American parish whose congregation included families drawn to Lackawanna by its growing steel industry.

Vinny’s own family was among them. In 1913, his grandfather had come with his family from Rosburgo, a small seaside village on Italy’s Adriatic coast. He found work in the mills of the Lackawanna Steel Company and later with the industrial giant Bethlehem Steel, which took over the Lackawanna company in 1922. Vinny’s father followed in his father’s footsteps and spent his entire working life in those same mills.

Vinny chose another path. After graduating from Lackawanna High School in 1954, he left behind the smokestacks, pollution, and industrial grit of his hometown and entered the Conventual Franciscans.

That same year, Tommy Bernwinkler left Baltimore to do the same.

The two eighteen-year-olds met as novices at Mount Saint Lawrence Novitiate in Becket, Massachusetts. The isolated retreat in the mountains of western Massachusetts presented both young men with a world far removed from the urban neighborhoods in which they had been raised. For Vinny, it was especially removed from the steel mills and industrial landscape of Lackawanna. Yet neither young friar ever entirely lost the character of the place from which he had come.

At the conclusion of their novitiate year, on August 15, 1955, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Tommy and Vinny professed their first temporary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. On the day of their profession, they also adopted their new religious names: Tommy became Maximilian Mary, and Vinny became Anthony Mary.

Tommy chose Maximilian in honor of Father Maximilian Mary Kolbe, OFM Conv., a confrere who had been imprisoned and put to death by the Nazis at Auschwitz only fourteen years earlier. Among the friars there was already a strong belief that Father Kolbe would someday be canonized by the Church and recognized as a saint.

Vinny chose Anthony primarily because of his devotion to St. Anthony of Padua, one of the most beloved Franciscan saints in the Catholic world. The name also honored his home parish and the generations of his family who had worshiped there since his Italian grandfather arrived in the United States in 1913.

Both young friars chose to add Mary to their religious names as an expression of their devotion to the Blessed Virgin and their desire to place themselves under her protection.

Their common devotion to Mary, something they often discussed during that year, centered particularly on the powerful words of her Magnificat in the Gospel of St. Luke: “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.” Both young friars had decided to make those words a central theme in the way they hoped to live their religious lives.

They then continued their formation together as classmates at St. Hyacinth College and Seminary in Granby, Massachusetts, a venerable institution founded in 1927 to educate young Franciscan friars, many of whom would eventually serve predominantly blue-collar and working-class parishes in communities stretching from Alabama to Maine, particularly throughout the eastern United States.

Both were members of St. Hyacinth’s graduating class of 1959. The following year, they were stationed together as student friars for an apostolic year at St. Francis High School in Athol Springs, New York.

Athol Springs, a few miles south of Buffalo, was a quieter community than industrial Lackawanna immediately to its north. For Anthony, the assignment brought him close to home again. For Max, western New York was an entirely new world. Here he encountered for the first time the massive industrial landscape along Lake Erie, where smoke and grime from the steel mills could be carried by the winds sweeping in from the lake.

At the time, St. Francis served as a residential high school for boys, some of whom might later enter the Franciscan community themselves. Max and Anthony spent their apostolic year serving as teachers’ aides, assisting seasoned friars who had taught at the high school for years, and they also worked as dishwashers in the residents’ dining room. It was an enriching year of service together, but afterward their paths began to diverge.

Max continued his studies for the priesthood at St. Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary in Rensselaer, New York, the theological school of the Order. Anthony’s vocation, however, was that of a religious brother. Rather than continue with seminary studies, he chose to prepare himself for a life of service through nursing.

Anthony enrolled in the nursing program at Boston College. While studying there, he lived with fellow Conventual Franciscan friars at St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Church in nearby Chelsea, a gritty, densely populated working-class city across the river from Boston.

In 1964, after completing his theological studies at St. Anthony-on-Hudson in Rensselaer, Friar Max was ordained to the priesthood by the local bishop, the Most Reverend William A. Scully, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, just across the Hudson River from the seminary.

His first assignment as a young priest took him to Bessemer, Alabama, and the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, a parish founded by the Conventual Franciscans in 1940 to serve Black Catholics who had often been neglected in the Birmingham area and throughout that part of the country. He would often say the four years he spent in Bessemer were among the most rewarding of his life, and it was there his real seminary training began.

In the same year Max completed his theological studies and was ordained to the priesthood in Albany, Anthony completed his studies at Boston College’s Chestnut Hill campus. He graduated from B.C. summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.

That summer, both friars began the first major ministries of their religious lives. Max was assigned to St. Francis of Assisi Church in Bessemer, Alabama, while Anthony was assigned to the Conventual Franciscan missions in Costa Rica.

Anthony departed the friary in Chelsea and traveled to New York, where he sailed aboard one of United Fruit’s Great White Fleet “banana boats,” bound for Puerto Limón, Costa Rica. Although United Fruit no longer regularly operated passenger service aboard its ships, the company had continued a tradition of transporting Franciscan friars free of charge to destinations in Costa Rica. Many of these religious men were serving in company towns and among the families of United Fruit workers, and their presence was beneficial not only to the people they served, but also to the company’s image and business interests.

Anthony arrived in Puerto Limón on the Caribbean coast a few days later and then set out on the long and tedious overland journey to his ultimate destination, Golfito, a remote village on the country’s southwestern Pacific coast. By then a well-established Franciscan mission site, Golfito would become Anthony’s home for the next ten years. There he helped establish a medical clinic serving the poor and needy of the surrounding area, particularly families who worked on the banana plantations.

Those ten years in Costa Rica enabled Anthony to put into practice the medical training he had received, but more importantly for him, they offered the opportunity to live a missionary life devoted to serving the poor and needy in an isolated and underdeveloped part of the world.

+ Elizabeth Ann Murphy

 

+ Elizabeth Ann Murphy (d. 02/26/25)

+Liz and I were fellow victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by our Catholic middle school teacher John Merzbacher (we and unfortunately among many other classmates).

And just a stone’s throw away from Merzbacher’s classroom, beginning when I was 13 years old, I was put through unimaginable emotional, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of clergymen in the Our Lady of Good Counsel Church rectory.

The scars are deep and the lingering trauma lasts forever.

I don’t know, but I wonder if it’s possible for some within our church to have a sense of how much such experiences of abuse have lifelong impacts on the emotional health of such survivors.

One such impact is a never-ending and lingering distrust of men who hold “positions of power” within the hierarchical structure of the church . . .

Maybe these are subjects about which church leaders and bureaucrats, try as they may, but because of their obstinacy can’t ever really properly address? Maybe they aren’t able to have concern for things for which they’d rather just turn blind eyes, or perhaps about which they can never truly comprehend? I don’t know . . . , but these questions will forever perplex me!

- - - - - - -

Liz was my friend: I knew her heart well, I knew she had great faith, and that she placed that faith in God, and not in men.

+Elizabeth: Rest in peace good and faithful servant!!

Liz’s funeral and the celebration of her life will take place at St. Francis Xavier Church, 13717 Cuba Road, Hunt Valley, MD, Saturday, March 8th at 1:00 p.m.

I will be there.

See Liz’s very poignant and heartbreaking obituary (with many references to her struggle with and within the Roman Catholic Church, and her own experience of abuse, recovery and hope) at the following link:

+Liz’s obituary:  https://www.peacefulalternatives.com/obituary/elizabeth-murphy

 
The article referenced in the attached photo: https://catholicreview.org/believe-us-survivors-express-anger-hope-following-release-of-attorney-generals-report/ 

+Elizabeth Ann Murphy

 

 REST IN PEACE:

This post is one of many tribute pages found on my blog created to honor significant family members, friends, and loved ones who have passed from this life to the next . . .

+ Elizabeth Ann "Liz" Murphy (middle school friend and survivor!)

Date/place of birth: March 10, 1961, Baltimore, Maryland

Date/place of death: February 26, 2025, Baltimore, Maryland

 

**See Liz's obituary at the following link: https://www.peacefulalternatives.com/obituary/elizabeth-murphy

 

– Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.