Cover
story Novices pray together, watch Sunday game
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff Wilmington, Del.
In 1996, Russell Petrocelli worked
in Penn Station for New Jersey Transit and was looking for somewhere to go to
Mass. He found St. Francis Parish.
Today, at 34, hes one of eight novices among the 16
Franciscans crammed into the gray stone rectory alongside St. Pauls
Church here. Not a neighborhood where you wander around alone at night. The
novices -- just back from studying Spanish in Bolivia -- live in community,
work in schools, visit prisons and hospitals, and help the poor.
The hardest part of becoming a friar, Petrocelli said, was
being 31 years old, a career established, and explaining to my family and
friends, This is what Im called to.
When I moved to the Bronx, he said, they all
wanted to come over, see what my room looked like. Fascinated.
The South Bronx is where Franciscan candidates live and work --
currently five of them -- before Wilmington and the watchful eye of novice
master and guardian, Fr. Tom Gallagher. Then they take their vows.
The only time I had any doubts, said Zachary Elliott,
at 43 the oldest novice, was on the plane going back home, sitting there
with the actual paperwork in my hand, ready to be filled out. Making the
commitment. After that, leaving the job, selling my home, that was the easy
part.
Is becoming a friar more countercultural than two decades ago?
Petrocelli says not. I think its more accepted to make a decision
later in life.
Elliott had considered the priesthood for some time. When the New
Jersey native moved to North Carolina and lived for the first time in an area
where Catholics are a tiny minority, he hunted for a church and found the
Franciscan parish in Raleigh.
I loved it -- the liturgies, the hospitality. Yes, I could
do this, this was something I wanted to pursue, he said. Both Petrocelli
and Elliott are heading toward ordination.
Community living is really very normal. That took me by
surprise, said Petrocelli, who thought thered be more piety.
We pray together, do all those things, but we also sit down on a Sunday
afternoon and watch the game. The challenge, living with 16 people you
didnt pick to live with, is in somehow making it work.
The candidates attend 7 a.m. prayer, take time out mid-morning for
chapel, reflecting on the readings, and twice a week attend Mass together.
And amid an affluent, self-indulgent and hypersexed world, they
take the vows: poverty, chastity and obedience.
We cant be sexually active, Elliott said,
but we can still maintain and develop our own intimacies. Theres a
lot to be gained. I see the celibacy, the chaste life, as almost sort of
freeing, too. The workshops the novices have, said Petrocelli, stress
that in choosing celibacy you never lose your sexuality as a
person.
Obedience? We just do what Fr. Tom tells us,
Petrocelli said. Gallagher laughed loudest of all. Then Petrocelli added,
Were treated like adults and expected to act accordingly.
As for poverty, theyre adjusting. Friars get pocket money
for toothpaste and such. Elliott admits he was a free spender, misses going out
to dinner, taking vacations.
And oh, how Petrocelli misses his car.
National Catholic Reporter, June 16,
2000
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