Young People Embrace Franciscan Spirit

The 2010-2011 FrancisCorps volunteers with Brother Jim Moore on the left and Friar Justin Biase on the right

At the end of August not long before students started making their way back to school, eleven new FrancisCorps volunteers for the 2010-2011 year met their director Brother Jim Moore and Friar Justin Biase for their Commissioning Liturgy at Assumption Church in Syracuse, New York. Friar Justin – the Minister Provincial of the Conventual Franciscans’ Immaculate Conception Province – presided at the ceremony.

Assumption Parish, Syracuse, New York

This year’s eleven new volunteers will be serving communities in Syracuse and San Jose, Costa Rica. They are all recent graduates from universities in the central and eastern United States, including Georgetown and Notre Dame. Taking a year from their lives to volunteer with FrancisCorps will bring these young people closer to individuals that they might not have necessarily met in their usual surroundings.

FrancisCorps’ volunteerism and contact with people from different backgrounds are what makes this Conventual Franciscan volunteer program for young people Franciscan. St. Francis of Assisi loved God very much. He lived simply and in service to others. Coming from a wealthy family, Francis embraced everyone irrelevant of background. FrancisCorps volunteers do the same.

(Sources of all related images on webpage and homepage: Conventual Franciscans and www.kapsi-syr.com.)