Len Mother Brother

Graduation1954

LenArchLittle 1974

Len in PNG 68

WestIvanhoeCommunity2007

LenSelfPortrate

Len Francis

What follows are extracts from a Life of Len Francis written by Br. Mark O'Loughlin. It may convince you to read the full document or you may wish to go to the complete document immediately. It can be downloaded here.

In July 1940 Len's younger and healthy sister Joan died after a brief illness from a then all-too-frequent fatal peritoneal infection resulting from appendicitis. Len was fourteen, and Joan was seven. The overwhelming pain of Joan's death reverberated throughout Len's life. He wrote of the personal impact: With dramatic suddenness, God became real – not the distant Being I had known, but One whose power was absolute, reaching into our home, our family. I would look up towards the stars and ask: "God, where is Joan? Why have you taken her away?" Len was propelled into two lifelong searches ... to know this awful God, and to find Joan. The first he pursued through his religious vocation. The second was evident in his embrace of relationships. In a remarkable disposition of a Loving Providence the two quests became one, and in his final years Len wrote of his experience of community life with men and women in West Ivanhoe: I feel that my quest for the One who gives meaning to life is being answered in the many faces and personalities who give life to this community. For I can know the Infinite God only as well as I know and understand each person I encounter....

The personal traits evident in Len's life were so obviously acquired during the formative years at home with his family in Northcote ... generosity; fidelity to his family, to his Catholic upbringing, and subsequently to his Brotherhood; a respectful love of others; a deep love of reading and music; a readiness to be useful with repairs and maintenance; a capacity to live simply and with less; a readiness to get on with the tasks of life; and a personal ethic of hard work....

During the customary spiritual retreat at La Verna Len studied a card that Justus Smith had given him. It depicted Jesus, with his hand on the shoulder of a young man, saying "Come follow me". Len remembered this moment as a decisive one. He knew that these words were addressed to him. He made his decision. He left his family in late January 1942 to travel by train to Strathfield, a suburb of Sydney, where he would complete his secondary education with other young men who were also thinking of becoming Brothers. Len found this step hard, but it was no doubt harder for his mother and father who had already lost Joan. They were to lose Bernard not long after when he joined the army. Len was conscious that only the cheerful Beryl remained at home to support their parents....

Throughout his life Len insisted that he never aspired to be a teacher. He wanted to be a “farm brother”. He remarked later “Nobody listened”! Perhaps happily! Throughout his life Len never refused to teach or take responsibility for leadership of schools. He was to teach for 36 years in New South Wales and Victoria and Papua New Guinea, and was the founding Principal of schools in Victoria and in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. It was an extraordinary subjugation of his wishes and needs to those of the leaders of the Congregation. This reflected a personal fidelity into which he was educated within his family, and a religious obedience that he undertook with his vows. These were ever-present in Len’s life....

Len judged that he was a "successful teacher", who had "no problems with discipline". When he was nine years of age Len's eye, but not his eyesight, was damaged by glass from a broken bottle. He remembered from his early years of teaching a student's playful admonition "Don't look at us with your evil eye"! From his youth Len bore himself with an inner self-assurance and confidence, and it is not surprising that maintaining class and school discipline was never a problem for him. The "evil eye" may well have added to the aura! A life-long friend and contemporary of Len, Brother Brian Moylan, remembered Len during their Lewisham time together at St. Thomas' as being "good in class with Grades 3 and 4 ... always calm, friendly, business-like and really interested in the boys"....

After successfully completing his university studies Len was to spend his last three years in Sydney at Burwood. These were more relaxed and enjoyable times, and community life more amicable and brotherly. In Len's words "the sun was beginning to shine again". With perhaps a little understatement Len looked back on these Sydney years as "hard". But he could add also "they were enjoyable"....

Len met Father Augustine Fitzsimmons, a Passionist priest, who introduced them to a spiritual rather than dogmatic theology. Of this experience Len wrote: New vistas opened up before me. We were encouraged to find our Personal Ideal, a way of being unique to one's gifts and talents. God loves me, and so I must love myself. God loves all of my sisters and brothers, and so must I. But to lead them to God I must make it possible for people to love me. For me this was revolutionary. It was a positive not negative spirituality. Affirming myself, not denying myself, was the emphasis. My role as Brother was not to teach as much as to be a man whom others could see to be good and kind and loving.

During 1967 Len's generosity, and adventurous and courageous spirit, led him to volunteer for the Christian Brothers' outreach mission to the people of Papua New Guinea. This was in response to the initiative of the Brothers' Superior General, Brother Austin Loftus, who asked all provinces to undertake their own foreign mission. In 1968 Len took pioneering responsibility as both the principal and Christian Brothers' community leader at the mission-run boarding school Fatima College in Banz in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Two of his companions in this endeavour were Brothers Kevin Laws and Pat Mohen....

Br Kevin Laws writes of this period, "...Len understood the local challenges. He immediately began working closely with the Sisters of Notre Dame who were in charge of the girls. He welcomed to our house-warming the primary teachers, who were nationals, and fostered an atmosphere of acceptance and co-operation with all those living on the mission station. He undertook a two-week Pidgin English course to become familiar with the lingua franca of the area and used it to advantage when talking with parents"....

Len was appointed Vocations Director, and for the next three years (1979 to 1981) helped other Vocation Directors to run ‘camps’ and ‘retreats’ for young men and women. Len wrote: “My record was unbeatable – I recruited not one Brother during those three years. My daily hour of meditation began in those years, and I feel that I grew spiritually”....

Len spent one year at the Mercy Hospital, and then took up this ministry in St. Vincent's Public Hospital in inner Melbourne. Mrs Joy White, who lives in Bendigo in country Victoria, gives us an insight into Len's hospital pastoral care. Joy wrote: Brother Len befriended my husband during the many times that Laurie was a seriously ill patient in St. Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne. Laurie was a student at St. Virgil's College in Hobart, and this created the opportunity to chat about Brothers. Late one evening Len turned up at Laurie's bedside with a Brother from his St. Virgil's days, and this gave Laurie great pleasure. After Laurie's death in 1989 Len has continued to be a special person and friend to me. He would travel to Bendigo with a community member to see me, or we would catch up in Melbourne. I recall that before Len moved to Ivanhoe in 1995 he was worried about where the community would find a new home after being told to leave the Clifton Hill residence. One night Len phoned to say "Joy, your prayers and mine have been answered ... We have been offered a home". A true and wonderful man, caring of all, giving of himself even when his health was waning."...

Tom Kingston takes up the story: After I had completed a study year Len and I met up again and this time we talked about setting up a community of religious and non-religious members. Our idea was that if Brothers indeed had something to offer then one way to show this would be to open a Brothers' community to others. We pondered the possibility of a 'mixed' community. Again we met with the Leadership Team and again the Leadership Team supported the idea and so in 1990 Len and I moved into a house bequeathed to the Brothers on Grey Street in East Melbourne. This time we were joined by a young university student, Patrick O'Sullivan, and a young woman work colleague of Len's from St Vincent's Hospital who was studying theology, Anna Duffy. The four of us lived together for the year. Again Len was on this cutting edge of a new way of being a Christian Brother.

During the West Ivanhoe years Len and the community articulated its 'Principles of Life' as follows:

1. To seek to live with deep respect and care for each other, valuing the uniqueness and sacredness of each person.
2. And to seek to live this respect by caring for each other person in the community, and supporting them in their life tasks.
3. To seek to be practical in this care for each other by sharing fully and equally in the life tasks of the community ... housekeeping / property and grounds maintenance / recycling / shopping / meal preparation / maintaining the safety and security of our home.
4. To seek to be hospitable in a discerning and responsible way.
5. To seek to live simply but enjoyably together, by keeping costs to a minimum, by avoiding waste of food and water and power, and by recycling.
6. To gather on a weekly basis to share a meal and discuss and celebrate the life of the community.

Siriporn Choochinprakarn, a devout Buddhist Thai lady, wrote of Len: I first met Brother Len at my Australian Nationalized Ceremony in 2003. I was in Australia alone, without any family, and was impressed with how warm, kind and caring he was. He was always attentive to other people's needs. After spending almost two years with Len in the West Ivanhoe Community, I would like to say that Brother Len is the kindest person I have ever met. I have learned from him how to be a good person, as he always was. I will never forget his sense of humour that he shared with us sometimes after dinner. He is a deeply spiritual person, and I am honoured and blessed to have had the opportunity to know Len and spend part of my life with him...

The foundations of Len's spirituality were laid during his formative years with his family. And the tragic death of his sister Joan impelled Len into two lifelong searches ... to find Joan, and to understand a God was who had snatched her from his life. Len himself recognized that his early life was one of "doing and teaching", as the motto of the Christian Brothers expressed ... Facere et Docere. But after his years of leadership in Ringwood and Papua New Guinea he saw a change in himself to a life more orientated towards "being Brother"...

That reassuring Psalm 46 proclaims that Yahweh Sabaoth is on our side. Mounted on the front of the writing desk in his office in West Ivanhoe, that Len occupied during the last fifteen years of his life, is a small decorative wooden plaque with a phrase from that psalm: Be still and know that I am God. A preceding phrase declares: There is a river whose streams refresh the city of God, and it sanctifies the dwelling of the Most High. It was evident in the closing decades of his life that Len had entered the stillness, and the river had assuredly brought its refreshment. A profound personal contentment and peacefulness in Len’s final months were the human face of that sanctification. Len died peacefully in what he regarded as his home at Mercy Place in Melbourne on the afternoon of 10 August 2011, finally entering the eternal rest that he had begun to long for.