Bishop Henning with
Rhode Island State FlagThis year the week of March 8-14 was designated as Catholic Sisters Week. The 2025 theme was “Beacons of Hope, Changing the World,” which resonated in particular with the many communities of religious sisters in the Diocese of Providence in Rhode Island whose official state motto is simply Hope, signified by a golden anchor on a blue background. Memorably, in the Mass of Reception of coadjutor Bishop Richard G. Henning in the Cathedral on January 26, 2023, before he began his homily, Bishop Henning pulled from a shelf below the ambo the state flag of Rhode Island. He said, “To see on a state flag that ancient Christian symbol, the anchor, the symbol of hope, and not just the symbol, the word is written right there on that flag. In my prayer I thought, ‘I’m going to live in the state of hope.’ Hope, St. Paul teaches us, is central to the faith. Christ Jesus our hope. And I hope I am a man of hope. I hope we all are Christians who live hope.” This theme figures prominently in our current Jubilee Year. We are all called to be “Pilgrims of Hope” as decreed by the late Pope Francis in his final Papal Bull of May 9, 2024. Known as Spes non confundit, or Hope Does Not Disappoint (Romans 5:5), the official logo design created by the Vatican even includes the image of an anchor and waves beneath four stylized figures which represent all humanity from the four corners of the world.

Besides a time to honor the Catholic religious sisters, the Church also sets aside a day each year for remembering the many religious brothers who work in various ministries throughout the world. National Religious Brothers’ Day falls annually on May 1, one of the feasts of St. Joseph who (like Our Holy Father St. Benedict) merits two feast days. March 19 recognizes him as the Husband of Mary, while May 1 is the Feast of Joseph the Worker, established in 1955 by Pope Pius XII. While some religious orders are comprised of both ordained priests and professed consecrated brothers, including both priests and non-priests, others are non-clerical orders whose individuals remain brothers, such as the Franciscan Brothers of Peace. The Institute for Religious Life based in Libertyville, Illinois, maintains a list of dozens of men who were canonized as saints by the Catholic Church but who lived out their lives not as ordained priests, but as brothers, or as role models for the vocation of brotherhood. The list is headed by St. Joseph, the primary role model, and includes such other familiar names as St. Benedict, St. André Bessette, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Martin de Porres. Here in Rhode Island, the Christian Brothers Center in nearby Narragansett, where young men wishing years ago to discern a vocation and begin their novitiate as a De La Salle Christian Brother lived and studied, continues to be the centerpiece of their 106-acre site along the Atlantic Ocean. The campus also houses the Ocean Tides School whose programming for male youths is designated as general and special education. Their mission of teaching the poor began in France over 300 years ago and continues to this day, eventually reaching our shores about 150 years ago.

I lay no claim to being the first religious brother in my family. You may have read my note in a previous issue of The Current about my great-uncle from whom I took my religious name honoring Pope St. Sixtus II. That pontiff had been martyred in Rome in 258 A.D. during the persecutions of the Emperor Valerian and is mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass (“...Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus...”). My great-uncle, Br. Sixtus Demshock, C.F.X. (1897-1977), entered the Congregation of St. Francis Xavier at age 15 in 1913 and remained committed to his vows as a religious brother for 64 years. Yet another one of my ancestors was a young man on the enate, or maternal, side of my family, who was professed as a Christian Brother in Czechoslovakia but who never emigrated to America. Little is known of him and his sister, a nun, other than family stories and a surviving portrait photograph of the two of them in full religious attire mounted as a cabinet card. Sadly, the religious names of the siblings are not recorded and we only know their last name: Rychvalsky. They were born in the latter half of the 19th-century since the cabinet card photo was taken in France at Saint-Vallier, probably during a layover on their train ride through the city to Rome. It was in the Eternal City on May 24, 1900, that Jean Baptiste de La Salle, the founder of the order to which the young man belonged, was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in St. Peter’s Basilica. The ceremony was witnessed by Brother Rychvalsky, F.S.C., and his sister.
The Rychvalsky Siblings
(Image by J. Ramet at St. Valier in the Rhone Alps)All of these family connections to the vocation of religious brothers have strengthened my appreciation and connection to National Religious Brothers Day and to the important role that so many men have played in the life of the Church, especially in the area of educating the young. On March 25, 2017, I attended the National Symposium on the Life of Religious Brothers held at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. We considered many topics pertinent to our congregations and their leadership, such as delaying seminary formation until after final profession; striving for parity between religious formation and priestly formation; and encouraging brother candidates to continue their theological education. We compared notes about how to better cultivate leadership among brothers within the institutes as well as involving the brothers as important articulators of the institute’s charism. While there, I had made an appointment with William Kevin Cawley, Senior Archivist and Curator of Manuscripts for Notre Dame. He had recently accepted responsibility for the Xaverian Brothers’ national archives and he graciously accepted all of my great-uncle’s documents, certificates, teaching records, photographs and correspondence from his 64 years as a brother, accessible for future researchers and inquisitive descendants of his family. May he, and the many other religious brothers, live long in our memory.

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