News & Events

​​RECONSIDERING THE HABIT

The distinctive external symbol of Franciscans friars is the iconic brown habit – the tunic, hood and white cord with three knots. When someone sees someone in the habit, they know immediately that that person is a Franciscan friar. After the Second Vatican Council, many orders and congregations – particularly the women’s ones – modified or abandoned their habits. The religious who continued with a traditional habit were generally seen as more conservative and against the reforms of the council. The more liberal religious minimized or dropped the use of a habit to more closely identify with secular people. When I joined the friars twenty years ago, the habit stilled played that role. If one saw a friar wearing his habit – particularly a habit with a Franciscan Crown (rosary) attached to his cord – they could be pretty certain that the friar was a conservative one. The more liberal friars rarely wore their habits and even attended formal events in coat and tie. I even know one friar who no longer owns a habit! After the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many left religious life. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were as many as 1,100 friars in my province. When I entered as a postulant close to the end of the last century, there were almost 500; today there are 291 of us. 

All the Friars shall wear coarse garments, and they may mend them with sacking and other pieces of cloth, with the blessings of God. 

Back