ROCKVILLE CENTRE — For 150 years the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn have been ministering to the people of Long Island. They marked the end of their jubilee celebration with a Mass of Thanksgiving at St. Agnes Cathedral here on August 1.

“When we came to Brooklyn in 1858, the Brooklyn Diocese was all of Long Island,” said Brother William Boslet, superior general of the order and a former vicar of religious for Rockville Centre. While a few brothers minister outside of New York, the bulk of the 80 Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn are split evenly between the Brooklyn and Rockville Centre Dioceses today, he said.

Many brothers are involved in education on the elementary, high school and college level. They serve on Long Island at St. Anthony’s High School, South Huntington; they also serve at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens, and Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School in Park Slope. They have taught in more than 20 parish schools and religious education programs in Brooklyn and Rockville Centre, and in recent years have worked in dioceses in New Jersey, North Carolina, Florida, Connecticut, Missouri and New Mexico.

Other brothers serve the elderly, those in prison, and people struggling with addictions, and work in parish ministries and diocesan offices. For example, Franciscan Brother James McVeigh is currently diocesan co-vicar for religious as well as the director and cabinet secretary for the Secretariat for the New Evangelization. Brother Patrick Murphy assists the senior priests at St. Pius X Residence in Amityville. Brother Jack Moylan is the director of prison ministry for Rockville Centre.

The Franciscan Brothers bought property in Centerport as a retreat in 1886. Two years later, they began to bring some city students there for recreation and education and Camp Alvernia was born. It continues to serve children and families today as a day camp for more than 900 boys and girls annually. 

In 1929, the brothers established a novitiate in then-rural Smithtown. The Franciscans literally brought light to the area, paying for the 72 electric poles needed for the electric company to string wires out to the sparsely developed region, according to a history of St. Anthony High School written by Sister of St. Joseph Lorna Strachan in 1984. In 1933, work was begun on St. Anthony’s Juniorate which eventually became St. Anthony’s High School, currently located in South Huntington.

“It is nice to look back over the years at what the brothers have been able to do,” said Brother William, but the jubilee is also time to look ahead to “what we will contribute in the future to the Church of Long Island.”

Throughout its history, the order’s house of formation has been on Long Island in Centerport, Smithtown, Oyster Bay, and currently in Kings Park, where Brother Gregory Cellini has been in formation. He will profess his first vows on August 15.

“As we are celebrating, we are looking forward,” he said. As a novice, he was not permitted to have a job, but he did volunteer this past year at the INN (Interfaith Nutrition Network) in Hempstead. He doesn’t yet know where he will be assigned in August, but he said his mission will reflect the call “to be Christ and Francis to the rest of the world,” continuing the work the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn have been doing for the past 150 years.