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For more than 100 years, an order of Capuchin Franciscan priests has prayed and preached in the Kanawha Valley, celebrating baptisms and marriages, comforting the bereaved, ministering to the needs of generation after generation of Catholics, always based in a small church on the West Side of Charleston. As of today, the Capuchin presence on the West Side, in Charleston, in the Kanawha Valley and in the state of West Virginia, is no more. The order’s provincial minister, based in Pittsburgh, made the decision to reassign the two remaining Capuchin priests in the state after concluding the community here could...

After more than a century of ministry and service to West Virginia, the Capuchin friars are leaving the Mountain State this month. Vows as Capuchin friars require they live together in community as brothers, sharing a prayer life and meals. A minimum of three brothers is necessary to fulfill this supportive environment. The area has two Capuchin friars serving five Catholic parishes in Kanawha and Putnam counties. The Rev. James Kurtz serves St. Anthony on Charleston’s West Side and Our Lady of the Hills in Elkview. The Rev. Joseph Tuscan serves Holy Trinity in Nitro, Christ the King in Dunbar...

Edit: now give us our Order back. (Rome) The Apostolic Commissioner Father Fidenzio Volpi OFM Cap has published a correction. In it, he explains that the family of the religious founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, Father Stefano Maria Manelli, has "absolutely nothing" to do with any possession or orders of transfer for the real estate of the Order. This had been maintained in recent months, according to which the the Order was placed under provisional commissioner, by the official Internet site of the Order www.immacolata.com. Father Alfonso Maria Bruno, who was appointed by Commissioner Volpi after the...

What happens when a former US Marine becomes a Franciscan friar and then goes on to found a monastery in the toughest district of Ireland’s toughest city? In 2007, Father Sylvester and a small group of American friars from the Bronx, N.Y., did just that when they arrived in Limerick, Ireland. They left behind their former lives as a teacher, a soldier, a punk-rock singer, and a rapper to transform lives through prayer. The urban district they live in, Moyross – a sea of burned-down and boarded-up houses – is always in the news for the wrong reasons: drugs, shootings,...

Four-time Tony nominee Tovah Feldshuh will be celebrated with a slew of awards in the coming months, including a gala dinner at the Friar's Club on Nov. 9. As part of the Friar's Club dinner, Feldshuh, who was most recently seen on Broadway in Dan Gordon's Irena's Vow, will be toasted by Jim Dale, Freddie Roman, Lee Roy Reams, Len Cariou, Christine Pedi, Michael Riedel, Martin Vidnovic and George S. Irving. Feldshuh will be honored alongside Shubert Organization Chairman Philip J. Smith with the "Friend of the Arts Award" from Town Hall on Oct. 18. She will also be recognized...

Turn up the sound and groove.

The thin stream of blood extended the length of the sidewalk running by the Catholic monastery's front door, trickled around the corner and ended midway down the block. The friars who live inside assumed a gunshot victim had collapsed. There, the monks gathered one night last summer and prayed, as residents of 13th Avenue in Newark's West Ward looked on. Two months later, the friars showed up in religious garb at a fu neral for another young area gunshot victim, and they again drew stares. Last autumn, the friars learned that people liked having them in the neighborhood. A man...

A group of Turkish youths threatened to kill a Catholic friar, grabbing him by the throat and shouting "God is Greatest", just days after a Catholic priest was shot dead in Turkey, the friar said on Friday. Martin Kmetec, a Franciscan friar from Slovenia, opened the door of his house on Thursday to find seven or eight angry men in their twenties. "He took me by the throat and pulled me inside and said 'we're going to finish you off' ... he also said Allahu Akbar (Arabic for God is Greatest)," Kmetec told Reuters by telephone from his church in...

Keith Bedford for The New York Times Over the years, the Friars Club has been the hangout of some of the country's legendary comedians. Welcome to the Friars Club, ladies and germs. Dyslexic guy walks into a bra. . . . YOU are not going to provoke me using the word 'museum' to describe the Friars Club," said Alan King, a few weeks before he died last month at 76. "Museums are good things, places to look and absorb and learn. It's a club, very unimportant in the larger scheme of things, like the Yale Club or the Harvard...

Father Glenn Sudano, speaking on behalf of a friary in New York, has issued an extensive report on the injuries suffered by nationally-known priest Father Benedict Groeschel Sunday night while he was near the Orlando International Airport [see previous story]:"The Lord give you peace. On behalf of Fr. Benedict and all the friars & sisters of the Renewal, I want to express to you our thanks for your concern and support during these most difficult days. Since Father's accident so many have contacted us hoping to hear some news. I am sorry the notice, critical but stable" and "no calls!"...