Maria Josefa Carolina Brader was born in Switzerland in 1860. At the age of twenty, she joined the cloistered Franciscan convent of Maria Hilf and took the name Sister Caritas. When a new disposition made it possible for cloistered nuns to engaged in apostolic work, she volunteered for a mission to South America. Her superior happily endorsed this plan: “Sister Caritas,” she wrote, “is supremely generous, shows no reluctance to any sacrifice, and with her extraordinary practical sense and education will be able to render great services to the mission.”
In 1893, she arrived in Tuquerres, Colombia, along with six other sisters. They operated in a vast territory that encompassed tropical jungles, coastal areas, and Andean highlands. Eventually, Sr. Caritas saw the need for a larger missionary order and received permission to found the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate, with a mission focused on education for the poor. As Superior General of the community, Mother Caritas encouraged her sisters to pursue higher education. “Do not forget,” she told them, “that the better educated, the greater the skills the educator possesses, the more she will be able to do for our holy religion and the glory of God…The more intense and visible her external activity, the deeper and more fervent her interior life must be.”
She died on February 27, 1943, by which time her congregation had spread to many countries, including the United States. She was beatified in 2003.
St. Margaret was raised in a poor family in Tuscany. Following the death of her mother when Margaret was just eleven, a new stepmother turned her out of the house. Eventually, with few apparent options, she eloped with a young nobleman, who kept her as his mistress. Though she bore him a son, he would not marry her. When he was eventually murdered, Margaret took this as a sign of God’s judgment on her life.
Penniless, she returned to her father’s house, but he would not take her in. Now homeless as well as destitute, she made her way to Cortona, where she had heard of the compassion of the Franciscan friars. She introduced herself by walking through town with a rope around her neck, a sign of her penitence. The friars quickly urged her to quit this spectacle and also curbed her proclivity for extremes of asceticism. Eventually she was accepted as a Franciscan tertiary. With other women she formed a nursing community, caring for the sick and the poor. Nevertheless, stories of her former life continued to generate gossip. She observed, “I see more Pharisees among Christians than surrounded Pilate.”
Over time, as reports spread of her holiness and her purported miracles, as well as her private colloquies with Christ, Margaret attracted more positive attention. The Franciscans urged her to embark on a public crusade to call sinners to conversion. Penitents from all over Italy, and as far away as France and Spain, made their way to Cortona to hear her spiritual discourses.
She died on February 22, 1297. She was canonized in 1728.
Show now that thou art converted; call others to repentance…. The graces I have bestowed on thee are not meant for thee alone.
—A message from the Lord to St. Margaret of Cortona
St. Conrad, a young nobleman from Piacenza, was out hunting one day when, in order to drive out his game, he ordered his servants to set fire to the surrounding brush-wood. Following a sudden turn in the wind, Conrad watched in horror as the fire consumed the neighboring fields. After returning quietly to town, he said nothing about his part in this disaster. But when a peasant was subsequently charged with the crime and sentenced to death, Conrad was filled with remorse. Stepping forward, he accepted the blame and paid for all the damages, though this left him nearly ruined. In this misfortune, however, Conrad saw the hand of God. Subsequently, he and his wife decided to give up all their property and pursue religious life. While his wife entered a convent of Poor Clares, Conrad entered the Third Order of St. Francis, joining a group of hermits in the Valley of Noto.
Contrary to his intentions, Conrad’s sacrifice caused him to be widely admired. To escape the throng of visitors, he retired to a remote grotto. But when his prayers were credited with ending a famine, he felt he had no choice but to welcome the stream of suffering pilgrims who came seeking his intervention. Many other miracles were credited to Conrad, and birds were reported to flutter over his head whenever he exited his hermitage. Discerning that his final hour had arrived, he lay on the ground in front of the crucifix and died on February 19, 1351. He was canonized in 1625.
Verdiana served as a housekeeper for rich relatives in Castelfiorentino, a town outside Florence. With the permission of her employers she joined a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James at Compostela in Spain. During the course of this journey, she made such a tremendous impression on her fellow pilgrims that they begged her to remain among them. She agreed on the condition that she might live as a hermit. Gladly, they build her a small cell attached to the wall of St. Antony’s oratory. There, at the age of twenty-six, following a solemn procession that included her confessor and a large crowd, she entered her cell, and allowed the entrance to be sealed behind her. In this room, with only a small window opening onto the oratory, she spent the following thirty-four years of her life.
Many people came to seek her prayers and spiritual counsel. The story circulated that Verdiana was joined in her cell by two snakes, which ate from her bowl. She also received human visitors, among them, apparently, St. Francis of Assisi, who is said to have admitted her to his Third Order.
When Verdiana died on February 10, 1242, the bells of Castelfiorentino spontaneously rang. Her cell became a famous site of pilgrimage. Her feast is observed by the Franciscans of February 16.
Daniel Egan, a Bronx native, joined the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement in 1935 and was ordained a priest. A turning point in his life came in 1952, as he was preaching in a church and noticed a woman in grave distress. She confessed that she was a drug addict struggling to kick her habit. Though Egan called every hospital in town, none would admit her: “She was shrugged off as a criminal.” He decided at that moment that he must open a home for women like her. That was the inspiration for Village Haven, a halfway house for women addicts, located across the street from the women’s house of detention.
The location was no accident. As Egan discovered, most of the women in the city jail were drug addicts. And yet few resources at the time were dedicated to recovery from addiction. Most authorities, even medical professionals, wrote off such addicts as hopeless cases. Fr. Egan believed otherwise.
Egan received permission from his order to dedicated himself full time to working with addicts, and he became such an expert in the field that he was dubbed “the Junkie Priest” – a name he happily adopted.
