y. learn how abbvie could help you save. (exciting music) wacarnivale live today. hello. and on behalf of the archdiocese of san francisco, welcome to mosaic. the archdiocese of san francisco has a long and deep relationship with st. francis and his followers. that followed the way of st. francis have many official names but we call them the francis cans. i said that the relationship to our city of san francisco is long, but it's not really that long in the franciscan scale of things. perhaps still in

adolescence really. she's named after her sainted father, of course. we all know who that is. the archdiocese of created about 160 years ago. the mission church was founded less than 250 years ago. all of that is recent history in the franciscan timeline. born close to 850 years ago and for more than eight centuries his followers have been among the pir spiritual and intellectual leaders of the catholic church. the way of saint francis is one of service, of humility, self-sacrifice to others and love for all creatures and creations. we'll talk with sister ellen mccabe to learn more about the franciscan mission and way of life. so please rejoin us after this brief break to meet sister

ellen and delve into the special world of the franciscans.

hello and thank you for joining us on mosaic. our guest today is a franciscan and we're going to find out about the vast universe franciscans and her special corner of it. now

this is sister ellen mccabe. >> good morning. >> thank you for joining us. you are, tell me the full name. one of the sisters of saint francis of penance and. >> christian charity. >> penance and christian charity. >> yeah. >> and we'll talk about the vast universe of franciscan things but tell us about yourself. >> i'm in redwood city, california. that's the province offices for saint francis province in california. our congregation is an international congregation. we have provinces in ten countries around the world and then each province has missions in other countries. >> ten countries around the world with provinces and sisters who populate them. >> right. >> okay. >> we used to have and probably in the hay day of the con legation around 5000 sisters. >> worldwide. >> worldwide. now we're about 1200. >> that's pretty good numbers for the declining population of catholic religious. >> but the most we have are in

indonesia and tanzania and brazil. the european provinces and the american provinces are slowly aging. >> we understand that and it's a demographic fact that they're aging out. you say there were 50 in the hay day. when was your congregation founded? >> we were founded in 1835 in a small village in southeastern holland. right along the german border. and it was right after the napoleanic wars. katherine damond was a young woman in the village. didn't have much education but was touched by god in her own space and in her own heart and wanted to serve. so she became -- there were no religious. the friars and the convents, everything had been closed. >> how did she fi the franciscan way?

>> she got a job working and slowly the capetians founded a third order section -- third order group that she belonged. >> to let's define that. a third order is associated lay people or no? >> yes. the franciscans have three orders. the first order is the friars. the second order are the pour claires. and francis realized towards the end of his life that there were people who were called to be franciscan who were not free to become either a religious or because they had families. but they still had that franciscan heart. >> they couldn't live in that community because they had another obligation. >> yeah. they had other obligations. the lay group was form sod these people could come together, share their faith. they could promote works together. but they still had their first commitment was to

their families. >> the founding of the first order was just after 1200, am i wrong? >> 1222. >> okay. >> i believe was the first rule. >> it seems confusing to the layman who looks into it. many different congregations but we have originals the order was friars minor. >> last right. >> then did they have an official name? >> i think it's just the porclares. i'm not aware what the official title is. >> if i'm a third order franciscan would have initials or titles? >> we have osf after our name. order of saint francis. >> and yourself. how did you find this order as your vocation? >> well, i hate to say this but i've been in it for 51 years. >> so you joined when you were 3. >> yes, i was very young. yeah. out of diapers. no, i was -- i

went to a catholic high school in a small town in nebraska and our sisters the community i belonged to our sisters were in the school there. and had been since the late 1800s. so i was attracted to their life and knew that i was called to it and so i entered the community the year after i graduated from high school. >> and was your vision that you would live in a community of sisters or that you would carry out a certain work as your vocation? what did you see as your vocation and what did you learn as your expertise? >> what i saw then is a little different than what i see now. what i saw then was a group of educated women who were educating the young people in my town and my area and also around the hospital. they were powerful film. >> yeah. >> they were well educated and they had traveled and there was something about them and the way they cared for us that i knew i wanted to join them.

>> when you did, what was your training? what became your expertise? >> i went to college. i majored in english and became an >>, was highschool from 19 - thll 1982 until 2002. then i did other various works for the community through the years. the community asked me to go to germany to learn the culture and the language then i went as a missionary to tanzania four different times for several months. >> taking part in the international order. >> and teaching english over there because english is the language they need for higher education. >> you learned some german but didn't become a translator. >> if you want to be a

translator you have to learn from the ground up, you know, not when you're in your late 40s. >> so you're not a teacher any more. >> no. >> but you're working in the archdiocese of san francisco. you live in redwood city. >> i work in our internal government in the province. i'm the administrative assistant to our provincial. >> let's take a break there. we'll be away for a minute. we'll come back and please learn more with sister ellen about the franciscans.

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sisterhood with ten provinces. >> uh-huh. >> but you derive your mission, your carism, your style of religion from saint francis originally. that was a long, long time ago i've forgotten some of my fifth grade catholic school learning. >> franciscan was the son of a wealthy merchant and when he was growing up it was just the time when the merchant class was becoming part of that wealthy class. there was the nobility and the clergy and then the peasants. some of the peasants were moving up in that area. and so francis came from a wealthy family. >> okay. >> and he had everything he wanted and he was kind of a playboy. >> okay. >> he was had a reputation in the town and wasn't always a good one, i don't think. but his dream was to go to the crusades. >> yes, right. >> he was on his way to join them and he was in some battles

and he got knocked off his horse and he was held prisoner for a year just down the road from assisi. he had some dreams and some visions then but it was a very dark time for him and when he went home his father was not happy with him and francis had somehow heard that call deep inside himself and he realized that. and for him it was the leepers. so as he went on with his life and realized he still wanted to go off to the crusades but francis had a dream in which the lord said to him francis, do you want to serve, who do you want to serve? the lord the master? of course he wanted to serve the master. he began to think and gradually his conversion was a slow one. sometimes we laugh at ourselves

and sometimes we say we're franciscans before francis was converted and sometimes it's after. >> okay, i see. >> we all have to go through our own conversions. he was -- he was praying in this little church that he rebuilt. he heard this -- the cross say to him francis rebuild my church. he took that literally. then he began to realize that it was more than that. that god was calling him to something more than just putting bricks and mortar together. and some of the other young men who he bee had been laughing at him because he'd become this kind of outcast in another way in the village. they began to join him and they began to form a brotherhood. >> interesting and their brotherhood was about -- it wasn't about teaching. was it about hospital work?

>> it was about serving those on the edges. the poverty stricken. the he lepers were a huge population. a large population in the assisi valley. they had to ring a bell. they had so say unclean. one day francis was riding his horse and he saw a leper. usually he would go the other direction. he went and embraced the leper. that as franciscans we look at that as really the pinnacle of his conversion when he was able to recognize jesus in the leper. >> very quickly he was called to form an order. men came around him in a brotherhood.

>> the small commune. her family was of the nobility. clare spoke several different languages. she saw francis and his work with the poor and clare herself had done this since the time she was a little child she would set some of her food aside and the servants would take it out then at night when her father wasn't looking. so clare had that same call. but it was impossible for women to roam through the country doing their preaching. franciscan made arrangements for her to spend a few nights then a hermit until they could find a place for her and finally they put the poor clares down in assisi. >> this is all in francis' lifetime. a few short years. we only have another minute in

this segment, but what's the magnetic attraction of people doing good? why did so many people so quickly join? >> the church was in a bad state. very much like the contemporary church. there was a lot of scandal, a lot of wealth and a lot of poor people and what was francis saw that discrepancy and he and others wanted to change that. you know, monks in monasteries could not, should not be acquiring all this wealth when there were people who didn't have enough to eat and children who were starving. so his desire was to be among the people and to serve the people as best he could. >> and in this it seems like francis and clare and their cohort of people, they didn't leave the church but they recognized a responsibility to, i don't know what the word is. >> to challenge the church. yes. yes. francis was very much and we as franciscans today we follow francis and francis' vision was we stay in communion

with the church. we are part of the church. >> yes. >> but part of our responsibility of being part of the church is to challenge those things that are not right. >> sounds very good. we do it on the domestic level. my wife says i'm committed to u, i'm part of the community but i'm challenging you as well. it's part of my job. >> that's right. >> let's take a break. we'll be back in a couple of minutes and we'll talk further about the franciscans.

hello and welcome back. we have a few more minutes to talk with sister ellen mccabe. she knows so much and she's done so much. now sister we wanted to ask you about projects that your congregation and order are doing. you mentioned hospital work to me. >> uh-huh. >> yeah. >> we were initially founded in holland by a peasant woman who just served the people that were in her village. so she was teaching the children. she was visiting the sick. so we ended up as a congregation that basically promoted teaching, education and hospital work. >> okay. >> we had several hospitals in different parts of the world, we still do. here in our province we have one hospital >> we did s as ith itheth iy

a congregation. now many of our sisters are older, many of them are retired. those who are still working are working in parishes and working on the margins, so to speak. >> okay. >> one of our sisters has gone down to the border couple of times in july and in august and is planning to go again to work with the immigrants there at the border. 25 years ago we went down to mexico to a small village. >> is that mountain territory? >> it's in the mountains. it's the southernmost state of mexico. a lot of indigenous peoples there. really no healthcare available to them at all. >> right. >> and so we're in the process now of building a clinic there so the needs of the indigenous eop takecare of r bone for, to

delivees, to, happens to themto get treatment. >> and you've been there 25 years. >> 25 years. >> do all the workers come down from the north or do you have -- >> we have four sisters now down there who are natives there. two of our sisters from this province go back and forth with their work there. and one of them is a nurse and they're training in administration so they can get this, not really going to be a hospital. more of a clinic where they can come. >> and you mentioned the clinic comes in a box. >> it's called a clinic in a can. >> genius of modern technology. >> it's a carrier, container. >> a container from a ship. >> yeah. and they build them in kansas and you can have them fully equipped with whatever you want in it them. i can't remember what they cost. it's

about a $2 million expense to get everything and then to get the land prepared for it to sit on and all of that. but two modules will become a surgical center and one module will become ob/gyn and the other module will be for emergency services. >> wonderful. >> so yeah, it's exciting. >> is there a way we can contribute? >> of course. yes. i'm sure that our sisters would be very happy to take contributions. i can give you our address. >> speak it now if you don't mind. >> okay. we're at the sisters of saint francis at post office box 1028 in redwood city, california 94064. >> wonderful. good to know. >> and yeah, so it's wonderful. we need funds and as franciscans, we're so so with begging. you know, it's not one of the things that we like to do but we do do it when we need to help the poor.

>> sure. that's wonderful. so that's an interesting project. but you mention your consecrated population is aging. some have retired. are you looking for vocations? >> the world is changing. women have many more opportunities and some ways that plays into it and in other ways it has nothing to do with it. god is still calling people to follow him in whatever way god chooses to call them. it might not be to the kind of religious life that i've lived for the last 50 years but there are people being called and we will walk with anyone who wants to walk that journey. it really wouldn't be fair for us to take young women into a group of grandmothers and say, you know, this is the way we live life. but if you want to come together as two or three and you want some guidance, we are there to walk with you. >> that sounds very attractive. there are lots of young people

searching for some spiritual component to their lives which they don't know quite where to find. >> there's a group called nuns and nones. >> it's the n-u-n-s. >> and the n-o-n-e-s. >> it's the communication between them. it's forming that relationship. at the bottom of our franciscan carism, that's what the carism is all about is relationship. what is our relationship. what is my relationship to my sisters. to the people i work with. to the people that i serve. to the world. you know, what is -- who am i in this world and what am i called to do. it's nothing big. it's relating on a one to one basis and doing what i can. >> you mentioned, yeah, that the franciscan carism or style is to kind of be on the margins, not put yourself forward. be of aid and assistance. be consistent. be stable. somewhat be varied. be unknown. i think that's part of it. >> that's kind of what it is,

yeah. everybody knows about francis but most people, i shouldn't say most people because i don't really know, but a lot of people think francis and the birdbath. and the blessing of the animals. but it's much more than that. it's identifying with the voiceless and the vulnerable. it's being at places like st. anthony's foundation. >> exactly. >> in the dining room there and on the streets with the people. being of service. the faithful fools. >> that's a good one. only a few seconds left. thank you very much. it's been a gift to meet you and talk with you. if anybody wants to look up the sisters. >> of saint francis. post office box 1028 redwood city, california. 94064. >> wonderful. it's been great talking to you. thank you so much for joining us on mosaic. if you want to get in touch with saint francis, all you need to do is to pray. he will

answer and hear what you're saying. thank you very much for joining us on mosaic. >> thank you.

san francisco's. san francisco's carnaval is bringing crowds. the neighborhood can definitely use it. bart releases a gloomy outlook if the state doesn't step in with extra funding. we remember those who gave their lives for our country on this memorial day weekend. i'm sund,