Franciscan friars together again 40 years later By Fabvienen Taylor
GREENWOOD — A trio of Franciscan friars, who in the 1970s attended Archbishop Ryan High School in Philadelphia, Pa., talked recently about their alma mater in an elementary classroom, emptied for lunch, at St. Francis of Assisi School.
The three were cloaked in the same long brown robes as the friars 40 years ago at Ryan, who inspired the three to choose “the road less traveled,” a road that brought them, for now, to St. Francis of Assisi Parish and School.
“I don’t think we would have ever dreamed, growing up in northeast Philly, we would be sitting in the Mississippi Delta one day without a cheesesteak place nearby,” said Father Greg Plata.
Father Plata, Brother Andy Brophy and Father Bill Stout make up the trio from Ryan.
They are members of the Franciscan Friars (OFM) from Pulaski, Wis., who founded Greenwood St. Francis of Assisi Parish in 1951 for African Americans and have staffed it since that time.
In 2002, Father Plata was appointed pastor of St. Francis and Brother Brophy was appointed development director.
In 2009, Father Plata was also named pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, previously staffed by Diocese of Jackson priests.
The trio was rounded out that year when Father Stout was appointed associate pastor of both parishes.
They all agree the situation is unique, especially since they ended up in the same place four decades later, without even trying.
Philadelphia and Greenwood are not only far apart in terms of miles, but also in terms of culture, leisure, size, race, work, and most importantly for this story, Catholicity.
In Greenwood, Catholics number about 625 out of a population of about 24,000, whereas in Philadelphia there are 1.5 million Catholics out of nearly 6 million people.
St. Francis School has 106 students in pre-K to sixth grade. The Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity work in the parish, and administer and teach in the school with lay teachers.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Father Plata said, “We were marinated in Catholics.”
Archbishop Ryan, which consisted of a high school for boys and another one for girls, was one of 29 diocesan high schools in Philadelphia at that time.
“There were over 2,000 boys and 3,000 girls so we primarily knew our own circle of friends and family because classes were so large,” he said.
While they attended the same high school, they graduated in ‘72 (Brophy), ‘74 (Plata) and ‘76 (Stout).
“We may not have attended classes together but we knew of each other from activities, through older siblings or through our parishes,” Father Plata said.
Each attended Catholic elementary schools which were feeder schools to the Catholic high schools. And each came from a large Catholic family and were altar servers.
In the middle 1960s, due to the exploding population in Philadelphia, the Franciscans were invited by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to help staff the diocesan schools.
As many as 30 Franciscans were staffing Archbishop Ryan, with only one or two lay teachers at the time, said Brother Brophy.
The future friars were in a time and place where a vocation to the priesthood, or religious life, was not only an option, but a choice admired by family and many friends, they said.
Father Stout remembers his Irish grandmother asking him, and each of her other grandsons, if someday he might be a priest.
“I had an aunt who was an Immaculate Heart of Mary sister and my parents esteemed priests, so I always knew, in my own family, it (priesthood) was an option. I was helped along to think about it, consider it,” he said.
An altar boy at St. Anselm Parish, he thought the diocesan priests were terrific guys.
On weekends the Franciscan friars came to help out. “I was impressed by them. They had a different way of preaching the Gospel with joy — with a down-to-earth message. You could just feel the embrace of God in a new way. It was more accessible,” he said.
Brother Brophy said in middle school, diocesan seminarians would give talks about the priesthood.
“They painted a picture of community in the seminary and there was something really attractive about that,” he said. “They were good experiences and they stuck in my head.”
“But suddenly (when the friars came) we were surrounded by all these Franciscans and event hough I was going to my diocesan parish for Mass on Sundays, our social lives revolved around school so the friars’ influence on us was tremendous.”
They saw the friars in class, after school, before school, he said. “We did all sorts of activities with them.”
The seed for his vocation goes back to the friars, he said.
“It was just neat hearing them talk about how they lived in community,” he said.
After high school he entered their formation program.
“They had this sense of joy, of laughter in the good ways to enjoy life; this sense of happiness that God had put us here to be happy; that we were not put on this earth to be unhappy.”
But after four years, when it was time to enter the novitiate, time to receive his habit, time to as the Franciscans say, “tie the knot on your cord,” Brother Brophy changed his mind and decided not to continue.
He later returned to complete his journey to become a Franciscan.
“I began to study about St. Francis, to study about his passion for the Gospel. That is when I really began to be absorbed into the Franciscans and into St. Francis and especially his outreach to the poor.”
As a child growing up, Father Plata had always thought about becoming a priest.
“I had an uncle who became a priest, went to the Philippines and started an orphanage there. He was revered in our family,” he said.
“The diocesan priests in Philly who served our parish were always wonderful priests, always good examples to us. Then we met these crazy guys in brown robes in high school,” he said.
“What impressed me was here they were religious, but at the same time, really human in a particular way.”
The high school was so huge it was a city unto itself, Father Plata said.
“But the Franciscans made it a community. They were young and full of life. When we went to theology class they opened the Scriptures for us in a new way,” he said.
“The presentation of Christ was brought from a whole different perspective. But I struggled back then with the priesthood. I didn’t understand the concept of religious life, of being a Franciscan,” he said, even though he was in the pre-novitiate two years.
“But the lure of getting married and all of that pulled me back to Philly and I got a degree in journalism from Temple University,” Father Plata said.
He worked for a corporation for a while but realized that was not the life for him.
“After discerning I didn’t want to follow the Lord that way I came back to the Franciscans, and the rest is history.”
Meanwhile, Father Stout went off to college and “drifted around for a while. Over a period of time I kept hearing the call and I finally realized I did not have to be perfectly ready, to know perfectly what God was doing. All I had to do was jjust try it.”
Greenwood has always been special to the Franciscans, said Father Plata.
“It is always a challenge with the resistence to change, the history of poverty, and sadly there is a history of segregation that still has repercussions.
“But I see the goodness in the people’s hearts and we are a part of their family. We have been here for 50 years. This is our family here,” he said.
