There is a letter of St. Francis that keeps speaking to me. Written to a Minister who was struggling with a brother who had gone wrong, it contains a sentence I never tire of hearing: let there be no brother in the world, however much he may have sinned, who, after looking into your eyes, goes away without your merciful forgiveness.
I think back to some of the visits I have made over these years. What stays with me are not so much the great tensions, but the small everyday fractures within fraternities: divisions along the lines of groups, ethnicities, cultures, generations. Differences that often go unnamed, yet weigh heavily on living together, on working side by side, on truly understanding one another.
I have come across fraternities that have begun to do something simple and brave: to acknowledge their fractures, to call them by name, to talk them through together; sometimes with help from someone outside. That is no small thing. It is the first step toward moving through a conflict rather than enduring it. Where this happens, something shifts. The fraternity begins to breathe again.
Then there are harder situations, friars who have made mistakes, sometimes serious ones, and have broken communion deeply. I have seen Ministers and friars walking alongside them — not to cover up, not to minimise, but to keep them from remaining trapped in their wrongdoing; opening the possibility of a path beyond the rupture.
Amongst these situations, some call for both particular care and particular firmness. When a brother has committed abuse of any kind, what civil and ecclesiastical justice requires must be carried out in full: this is the first form of truth and respect, above all toward the victims, who hold the first place in our care. Only afterwards, and never in place of this, have I seen, in some cases, a path of renewed welcome within the fraternity slowly opens. Some friars have spoken to me of a long road, walked from both sides, made of truth, accompaniment, possible reparation. I have also gathered the weariness of walking it. It becomes possible when sustained by the trust that God in his mercy is preparing a way of conversion even for these friars.
Through all of this, the letter of St. Francis remains a demanding light. It does not ask of us naivety or easy indulgence. It asks that we not be the ones to close the door. Even when — and precisely when — justice has done and continues to do its work, there remain the eyes of the minister, there remain the eyes of the brothers, in which another brother must still be able to find a possibility of a way forward.
In this Year of St. Francis, I find myself asking: how do our fraternities’ live forgiveness? Do we know how to name our struggles in relationship, or do we let them settle into silences that turn into walls? Do we accompany those who have done wrong, without confusing mercy with omission? And do we hold, with the same care, the wounds of those who have suffered?
Evangelical forgiveness is not a gesture made once and for all. It is a daily grammar, laborious, fragile. It is what holds us together as a fraternity, rather than as colleagues sharing the same roof. St. Francis knew this. We too, today, need to learn it again.