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Friar Stories: Journeys to Franciscan Life

Fr. Felician A. Foy, OFM

Fr. Felician Foy, OFM, former editor of the Catholic Almanac, had many other irons in the fire.

His first assignment, posted on the bulletin board of St. Francis Friary in New York City in the summer of 1948, directed him to report after Labor Day for teaching and related duties at Bishop Timon High School in Buffalo. He spent four years there, teaching religion, English, social studies and journalism while serving in pastoral ministry on weekends in various churches in and around Buffalo.

The years there were happy and busy, completely dominated by the routine of the school and its multiple interests and concerns for students and the community of South Buffalo.

A second unexpected call to ministry also came in the form of a bulletin board communiqué, this time in the friars’ quarters at the Buffalo high school on a Saturday evening in June 1952, when Fr. Felician returned from a skating party with students. The assignment was to St. Anthony’s Guild in Paterson, N.J., effective August 24.

“It seemed like the end of the world to me at the time,” said Fr. Felician, who had been completely immersed in the high school scene and had no inclination to seek or expectation to receive a change of assignment.

He was conditioned to heed both calls by the vow of obedience he had professed with more than 30 confreres in August 1942 at St. Bonaventure Friary in Paterson.

Born in 1918, he was educated in Catholic schools in Philadelphia and New York, in Franciscan houses of study, and after ordination to the priesthood in June 1947, at the Catholic University of America (in psychology) and Fordham University (in journalism).

“The rest of my education,” he said, “has been gained, like that of other priests, in the university of the everyday life of prayer, work and pastoral ministry.”

His principal work at St. Anthony’s Guild was production of the Catholic Almanac. He did it with the indispensable assistance of long-time associate editor Miss Rose Mary Avato, Rutgers alumna and top-grade researcher and analyst, who preceded him in death.

Together, they served the Guild in other editorial functions related to Spanish correspond dence, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine communications and editions of The Anthonian magazine through 1988.

The Guild took over publication of the almanac in the 1930s, years after the original devotional St. Anthony’s Almanac was published in 1904 by the Franciscans of Holy Name Province. The book had been issued under several titles: Franciscan Almanac, National Catholic Almanac and the present title, Catholic Almanac. Since 1972, it has been the publication of Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. in Huntington, Ind. Until the transfer of ownership to Our Sunday Visitor, the almanac had been a fixture on the list of books published by St. Anthony’s Guild.

Almanac work took a lot of time — but not totally for Fr. Felician. There was time for pastoral work of various kinds, such as part-time weekend assistance at a half dozen or so parishes in the Diocese of Paterson. The closest the friar ever came to a pastorate was in service to inmates of the Passaic County Jail from 1972 to 1988, when he “made bail,” as he described his departure from that ministry.

He then began several other chaplaincies. He served as spiritual assistant to two fraternities of the Secular Franciscan Order and as chaplain to a chapter of Columbiettes. Earlier he had been involved with the CYO and the Christian Family Movement.

His role with the Secular Franciscans was one of support, spiritual counsel and encouragement. He said that the relationship with the Seculars was mutually rewarding and inspiring in the ongoing development of their Franciscan experience.

In 1989 he became a member of the pastoral team at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Paterson. His chaplain’s routine was simple in its objective — pastoral presence and spiritual ministry— which complemented the medical and surgical mission of the hospital.

But his routine became complicated by a variety of factors, such as the attitudes of persons with respect to faith and religion, their view of suffering, the kind and degree of ailment and treatment, stress over critical decisions to be made; financial and family worries.

Fr. Felician spent much of his afternoons a week on room-to-room visitation, with special attention devoted to persons wanting to receive the sacrament of anointing. Requests for confession were easily complied with, and arrangements for Communion in the morning were made. Priests on the staff celebrated morning and late afternoon Mass in the hospital chapel.

His ordinary routine was always subject to disruption by beeper — for emergencies, for patients going to surgery, for information calls, for meetings with distressed relatives and friends of patients. Sometimes he felt like a yo-yo, going up and down on elevators to answer calls.

The people in need that Fr. Felician met tapped the whole keyboard of emotional response: a dying judge brought from a courtroom to the emergency room to die of a massive heart attack. A three-month-old boy battered by a girl’s boyfriend. A comatose mother in her thirties. All kinds of victims— of violence, of sudden pain, or agonizing anguish. Some more poignant than others because he had come to know them personally.

His ministry wasn’t all that grim, however. The whole scene changed at the sight of the smile of a child on recovery. The wave of a patient on his or her way home. The quiet and steady presence of family and friends at the side of a patient. The dedicated care and devotion of doctors, nurses and all kinds of attendants. And, at the last, the peaceful passage of a person from this life to the next.

Riverside, on the other side of Paterson, was the locale of Fr. Felician’s part-time ministry with Hispanics of Blessed Sacrament Parish.

“This opened a whole world for me,” he said, “of new people and new customs from almost every country of Central and South America. We were bound by a commonly professed faith and a language I’ve been trying to master since 1972.”

On the lighter side, Fr. Felician had a long-time love affair with music, mostly jazz and some barbershop. It started during his years in the seminary when a classmate taught him basic piano chords and progressions that he played ever since.

Later, after being introduced to the guitar, he joined two confreres to form a “Three Friars” troupe that sang at parish affairs around the Paterson area. The trio even cut a record — but it never made the charts. “It was all for fun,” the friar said.

Fr. Felician’s basic priestly dream had been to act as a good sideman to Christ the Priest and St. Francis the Little Poor Man. His family and friends agree that he fulfilled that dream in a remarkable way.

—This essay was written in 2002. A member of the staff of St. Anthony’s Guild for almost 50 years, Fr. Felician A. Foy, OFM, died February 21, 2002 at the age of 83 at St. Joseph Hospital, Paterson, N.J. He was a friar for 59 years and a priest for 54. This essay appeared in the June 2002 issue of The Anthonian magazine.