Sixteen Franciscan friars made their solemn (perpetual) profession in Jerusalem, in the hands of the Custos of the Holy Land, Fra Francesco Patton. They come from ten different countries and three of them – Alejandro Pinzón Vinchery, Maikel Anjelo and Mervyn Gladstone Gomez – belong to the Custody of the Holy Land, while the others belong to other Provinces of the Order of Friars Minor and are in the Holy Land for their studies.
Joy and sorrow
Fra Flavio was unable to arrive in time. Abroad for his studies, he has not been able to return to Jerusalem for a week due to the cancellations of flights caused by the tensions with Lebanon and Iran. On his return, he will profess the perpetual vows in a ceremony “ad hoc.” Like him, the relatives and some superiors of the provinces the professed belong to were unable to attend.
For the second year, the solemn professions took place with a war underway. In 2023, they were held on 7 October, the day of the attack by Hamas. “At this time,” the Custos emphasized in his homily, “we are experiencing the joy of being able to follow the Lord and give ourselves to him and at the same time, this context of tension and war which for years has afflicted the territory of our mission and which affects the hearts of each one of us and makes us suffer.”
A commitment to life
With the perpetual profession, the friars are admitted definitively into the Order of Friars Minor, with the commitment to love all their lives in obedience, without owning anything and in chastity, according to the Rule of the Order. It is a spiritual but also a juridical step. Each friars, after having recited the phrase of the profession in the hands of the Custos, signed it on the altar. In addition, after the ceremony, each friar signed the Attestation of the solemn profession in four copies and it is also signed by the Provincial who received the profession – in this case the Custos – by the two witnesses that each of the professed has chosen and who were at his side on the profession.
In his homily, the Custos addressed the solemn professed in particular: “In Chapter XVI of the Regula non bullata, St Francis is explicit about one aspect which we ought to always bear in mind, but above all in the context we live in: ‘And all the friars, wherever they are, must remember that they have given themselves and have abandoned their bodies to Our Lord Jesus Christ. And for his love they must expose themselves to the enemy, both visible and invisible, as the Lord says, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
In the hands of the Church
“The whole of the Church is walking with you. The visible Church that fills St Saviour but also the invisible one, the saints,” said the Custos. The moment of the solemn profession came immediately after the homily. After pronouncing their vows, the friars prostrated themselves while the litanies of the Saints were sung. Then each friar knelt down, put his hands in those of the Custos and pronounced the profession in his own language. After the solemn prayer with the imposition of the hands on the new professed, all the friars present embraced the new professed as a concrete brotherly sign of the embrace of the Order and of the Church for its children.
Marinella Bandini
