Welcome from our Immediate Past Minister,  Patricia Grace, OFS

A Minister’s Greetings

            Welcome to the webpage of the Immaculate Conception Fraternity of the Secular Franciscan Order.  We are located in San Diego, California.  We hope that your visit here informs and inspires you and brings you peace.

            We are a fraternity of the third order of St. Francis.  As you will learn at other places on this site, St. Francis was born in the thirteenth century and lived in Assisi in Umbria, Italy.  In his lifetime, he started three orders: the first order for religious men, the second, with St. Clare, for religious women, and the third for lay people, who wished to live in their communities and follow the Franciscan way of life.  This group in the third order was called the Sisters and Brothers of Penance and is now known as the Secular Franciscan Order (SFO), and internationally as Ordo Franciscanus Saecularis (OFS).  All three orders, with some variations, have continued to exist for 800 hundred years.  Today, the Secular Franciscan Order is organized into local fraternities, which are part of a region.  We are in the St. Francis Region.  Our region is one of thirty regions nationally, and our national fraternity relates directly with the international fraternity. Your exploration of this site will provide you with details of the worldwide order. 

            The Immaculate Conception fraternity is a small fraternity of under thirty active members and meets at Our Mother of Confidence Catholic Church in San Diego.  We are open to all Catholic men and women.  After a period of discernment and study, we profess to follow a rule of life given to us by St. Francis and amended over the years, most recently in 1978.  The Rule of the Secular Franciscan Order calls us to live in simplicity and to base our lives on prayer and contemplation.  We follow the ecclesial directives of the Roman Catholic Church through reception of the Sacraments and participation in our individual parishes.  We carry the charism or animating spirit of St. Francis into the world in our daily lives in our families, our work, and communities.  We seek to see Christ in everyone we encounter, to honor the universal kinship of all that lives, to work for peace, and to seek creative paths of justice. We devote ourselves to hearing and following the voice of Christ as He reveals to us the will of God the Father.

            We gather on a monthly basis and participate in other activities in the community in between our gatherings.  Our profession into the Order is for life as we make a lifetime commitment to follow this beautiful way of life.

            If you find that you are drawn to St. Francis and this way of life, please contact us and we would be glad to provide you with an orientation to the order with more details.  We welcome your inquiry and look forward to meeting you.

Peace and All Good,

Patricia Grace, OFS
Immediate Past Minister, Immaculate Conception Fraternity