Who We Are

“A community of prayer, of poverty, of penance, in the spirit of total consecration to the Immaculate Virgin.” – Traccia Mariana

Who We Are

“We have one freely chosen and beloved, fixed ideal … it is the Immaculate. For Her let us live, toil, suffer, and long to die”. These are the words of St. Maximilian Kolbe, and this is the ideal of the Franciscans of the Immaculate. Living a life of total consecration to the Immaculate in obedience, poverty, and chastity.

Our Life and Charism

A community of prayer, of poverty, of penance, in the spirit of total consecration to the Immaculate Virgin in the manner of St. Maximilian Mary, so that She may transform us, like St. Francis, into Jesus Crucified, and may let us be consumed in the conquest of all souls for God.

Thus do we love to formulate the manner of Franciscan life of a Casa Mariana (or Marian Friary), in which observance prevails of the Rule and Constitutions according to the model of primitive Franciscan communities and after the recent example offered us by St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe.

Our History

St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe (1894-1941 A. D.), a member of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, is one of the newest saints in the Roman Catholic Church. He was beatified in 1973 by Venerable Pope Paul VI and canonized in 1982. Pope John Paul II took that occasion to explain why he had chose to canonize St. Maximilian as a martyr: for in sacrificing his life at Auschwitz to save the life of a father of a family from certain death in the starvation bunker, St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe attained to a particular and exceedingly close conformity to Jesus Christ, who while we were yet sinners, laid down His own life to redeem us from the everlasting damnation of Hell.

Communities

We currently have five Marian Friaries in the United States:

Griswold, CT
New Bedford, MA
Maine, NY
Bloomington, IN

The F.I. Family

The Franciscans of the Immaculate are a religious family made up of many members. There are first order (Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate), second order (Poor Clares of the Immaculate) and third order (Mission of the Immaculate Mediatrix) communities which make up the FI Family.

For more details see the links below.

Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate

First Order

The Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate are a religious community of sisters faithful to the Holy Father, the Pope. They are a pontifical institute who are clothed with the angelic garment of the Immaculate Virgin and clad with sandals of seraphic poverty, prayer, penance and perfect joy.

Franciscan Handmaids of the Immaculate

Tertiaries

Our purpose is to make the Immaculate known and loved through the total consecration to Our Lady according to the method of St. Maximilian Kolbe. We profess the Franciscan Rule as our form of life and live in Community to realize our vow of total consecration to Our Lady and to better promote her work through our observance of the three evangelical vows.

Franciscan Third Order of the Immaculate

Third Order

“The Third Order was born in the mind of your Seraphic Father the day that a group of souls, moved and urged on by his words, asked to be allowed to accompany him on the path he was traveling, following in the footsteps of Christ, in whose name he was constantly repeating the words: “Be perfect” (Mt. 5,48).”— Venerable Pope Pius XII (Address of July 1, 1956)