This year, though, we have even more to celebrate with the beginning of events to mark the 800th anniversary of the Later Rule, the foundational document of the Franciscans. The centennial will be marked over the course of four years by certain events throughout the ministry of Francis. The first of these is Christmas at Greccio, which was first celebrated in 1223. Next year will focus on the stigmata, followed by the Canticle of the Creatures in 2025, and, finally, the death of St. Francis in 2026. 

But there is even more to celebrate. The US Franciscans will take a big step with the formation of the new Our Lady of Guadalupe Province. The new province is the result of years of planning to bring together six of the US provinces from across the country into one. 

Over the months and years to come, we will be sharing stories of these events and the many works of the friars, all in the spirit of St. Francis.  

For over three decades, Franciscans International has been giving the poor and oppressed a seat at the table at the United Nations. 

Whether it be children attacked in Benin or villagers in Amazon hamlets swamped with pollution from rapacious mining, Franciscans International is championing its cause at the United Nations. 

Organized in 1989 to lobby for social justice and peace in the tradition of St. Francis, Franciscans International remains part of the chorus of those seeking a just and more peaceful world. It brings the insights of the Italian saint from Assisi as well as the experience of Franciscans around the world to today’s global issues. 

Its impact is felt beyond the headlines, as the organization quietly lobbies to improve conditions for the poor and oppressed throughout the world, wherever Franciscans minister. 

Franciscans live and work close to the poor, often forced to confront issues that impact those they serve. In response, Franciscans International represents a wide berth of Franciscan communities, from Capuchins to Conventuals to Third Order members, as well as communities of Franciscan sisters, serving in the Americas, Europe, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. 

Capuchin Franciscan Benedict Ayodi works for Franciscans International out of its Manhattan headquarters in a converted apartment filled with reminders—including a massive wall map of the Amazon region—of the group’s connection to the developing world. 

Father Ayodi, a Kenyan, is the organization’s outreach officer. He says the Franciscans bring an unparalleled vision of the world to the United Nations. “Franciscans are a large family who work with so many poor people and people in need throughout the world,” he says. 

Father Joseph Rozansky, OFM, board president, has been part of Franciscans International since its inception and has long been involved in justice ministries in Rome. The friar formerly served as a missionary in Brazil. 

He is a promoter of using UN structures to address world problems. “It seemed to me a no-brainer that Franciscans should be involved at the United Nations, where many of our values are promoted on the world stage,” he says. 

Inspired by St. Francis

Franciscans International works beyond regional concerns to address universal issues, congruent with the vision of St. Francis. 

The man from Assisi has been celebrated for centuries for his concern for the poor, peaceful dialogue with Muslims and others, and his love of creation. All of it inspires Franciscans International, says Father Rozansky. 

“Our founder was very concerned with peace, with the impoverished, and with the planet,” Father Rozansky says. “We, the followers of Francis, are called to continue promoting these values in the world and, more specifically, at the United Nations.” 

Today’s issues are very different, but the ideals of Francis continue to permeate the group’s lobbying efforts. 

It’s been 800 years since Francis of Assisi walked through Europe and the Middle East. In his day, he was never forced to confront the massive industrial environmental degradation common in today’s world. Even so, St. Francis made a point of his friendships with God’s creatures, including birds and a much-feared wolf. Now Franciscans International is channeling that concern for creation into modern environmental activism to save the world from human-caused degradation. 

Father Markus Heinze has been involved in international peace and justice work with the Church since the 1980s and has long served in leadership for Franciscans International. He is currently the executive director in the organization’s Geneva offices—where the United Nations has a strong presence—but will be passing the torch of leadership to Blair Matheson, TSSF, in January. The Franciscan brand speaks credibly to a world seeking justice, says Father Heinze. 

“From my experience, I can say that people trust Franciscans, in particular when it comes to issues related to care of creation and people living in extreme poverty,” he says. “Franciscans are close to the ordinary people and understand their problems.” 

Pope Francis has called upon Catholics to bring the Gospel to the world and to focus more outwardly on global issues rather than on internal Church concerns. Father Heinze notes how the pope regularly describes the mission of the Church as not looking inward but of identifying with those who suffer. The United Nations and Franciscans International are a perfect match in that regard. 

Why the United Nations?

It’s not to say that the United Nations doesn’t have its detractors. 

The United Nations has been denounced for not doing enough to prevent wars and address poverty. Some critics suggest the organization is a tool for the richest and most powerful countries to exert their might. Others criticize it for passing high-minded resolutions with little follow-up and carrying on debates in the cloistered campus on New York’s East Side while conflicts rage around the world. Authoritarian governments frequently support resolutions that endorse human rights initiatives in other nations while political opponents are oppressed in their home countries. 

New Yorkers in particular seethe each year when the UN General Assembly meets in the fall, clogging already overcrowded city streets with limousines and SUVs. The presence of diplomats and world leaders enjoying the city’s highest-priced restaurants is reported each year. Member nation fees, including those from the United States, are often seen as a waste of money. 

But Father Heinze continues to see the United Nations as invaluable in bringing world leaders together, even if they don’t always move quickly on addressing injustices. No other organization has such a universal reach. 

“The United Nations is, of course, to be questioned in many ways, but it is the only place where all the world comes together to look at and deal with the challenges humanity faces,” he says. The ideals of the organization, articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, dovetail with Christian and Franciscan values, says Father Heinze. 

Franciscans International brings human rights and other issues to the wider attention of the world through the work of the United Nations. And, as it did with the cause of the children in Benin, Franciscans International can place a global spotlight on local issues. 

“I would say that we can have the most impact by focusing on countries and issues that are not on the priority list of the international community and where Franciscans on the ground are directly involved,” Father Heinze says. “Just to follow the mainstream and concentrate on issues like the wars in Syria or Ukraine, or the issues around COVID-19, will just add one more voice to the many.” 

Some of the work that Franciscans International does cannot be publicized due to its sensitive nature. Behind the scenes, the group is working with Franciscans in some African countries to highlight injustices that, if publicly advocated, could put activists at risk. 

Father Michael Perry, OFM, served with Franciscans International and worked for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on human rights issues. Father Perry, an Indiana native and former general minister for the worldwide Orders of Friars Minor, previously served as a missionary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He retains an interest in African issues and is a member of the board of Franciscans International. 

Franciscan Witness

He believes that the Franciscan charism has much to say on world issues. 

“We bring credibility, because, despite our weaknesses and challenges, we Franciscans place the human person, the dignity of all, including the created universe, at the center of our vocation and missionary work wherever we might find ourselves,” Father Perry says. 

Franciscans International relies strongly on the witness of Franciscans who are willing to take on, sometimes at great risk, issues pertaining to exploitation of the poor and the ravaging of the environment, he says. Local governments and large corporations often prefer to let the issues remain dormant. Speaking up can pose dangers. 

“I remain amazed by the courage of our brothers of the order, and of the entire Franciscan family, to not run away from difficulties, even in cases where they face personal threat to their own lives, choosing communion and solidarity over fear and care only for self,” says Father Perry. 

Bringing these concerns for social justice and the environment to the United Nations makes sense, despite the organization’s well-known shortcomings, say Franciscans International leaders. 

“There is no other venue, no other system or structure that brings together virtually all of the nations of the world to pursue dialogue, collaboration, and to seek sustainable solutions to endemic poverty, global health challenges, conflicts and wars, and to alter the human impact on destruction of the environment and negative contribution to climate change and global warming,” says Father Perry. 

Franciscans International sees a need for reforms to the structure of the United Nations itself. Among those issues, says Father Perry, is changing the veto power that the five permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom) hold over effective international action. That structure was developed at the beginning of the organization, based upon the will of the dominant powers in the immediate post-World War II world. The world has changed drastically since, and smaller, less prosperous nations need a stronger voice at the United Nations, say Franciscans International leaders. 

But they see progress even within the shortcomings of the current structure. 

Father Ayodi says there is value in getting governments to agree to make changes, even if at times they will fall short of UN goals. Articulating ideals can have a practical purpose. Getting governments on the record allows activists to point out where improvements need to be made. One example was when governments signed on to 17 goals of sustainable development, with improvements in sanitation, education, and income equity, among other concerns, to be implemented by 2030. 

“It helps for countries to be focused and also to be held accountable,” says Father Ayodi. 

Meanwhile, Franciscans around the world continue their ministries. They will be listening to their people whenever injustice abounds. Franciscans International will continue to have listening posts in regions of the world that rarely make headlines in the Western media but where Catholics working for justice and environmental protection remain active. 

“At least there is a voice,” says Father Ayodi. 

That voice exists in the halls and offices of the United Nations as well as in tiny hamlets in impoverished places in the world in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere—wherever Franciscans are engaged in spreading the Gospel. 

The people who live in those remote places where Franciscans minister are often not heard, yet are still able to retain their voice in the corridors of power at the United Nations, thanks to the lobbying efforts of Franciscans International. 

“Where no one wants to go, you will find a Franciscan,” says Father Ayodi.  

Sidebar: A Voice for People Around the World

Whether advocating for young people in the slums of Kenya, communities facing a blighted water supply in Brazil, or the poor in Quebec, Franciscans International stands with those they serve. The following are examples of the organization’s global reach. 

Africa 

Capuchin Franciscan Benedict Ayodi first discovered the work of Franciscans International back home in Kenya in 2008, when hundreds were killed as the result of political turmoil after a disputed election. Father Ayodi wanted to minister in a neighborhood deeply affected by the killings. The police told him not to go, saying it was too dangerous, but he insisted. 

There, Father Ayodi found a church where “the people were waiting for Mass. The only hope for them was to pray for peace.” 

Their deep faith that God could help inspired him. Father Ayodi offered Mass, augmenting prayers for peace with action. 

At a UN conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Father Ayodi urged the international community to do something about the crisis in his country. The late Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general, was enlisted to mediate the conflict, and the effort paid off with peaceful negotiations. Post-election peace prevailed. 

In the West African nation of Benin, Franciscans International pushed for world attention on an Indigenous practice in which children—often those with disabilities or with physical attributes different from the majority population—would be labeled as witches and then bullied or, in some cases, killed. Albino children were particularly targeted, as were children with autism. UN action pressured the Benin government to outlaw the persecution. 

Franciscans International also assisted young people in the Mukuru slum of Nairobi, Kenya, training them to implement water sanitation policies, an issue of grave concern throughout the developing world. 

Environment and the Amazon 

Inspired by St. Francis and Pope Francis, Franciscans International has lobbied to make an impact on the world’s environmental crisis. Franciscans International has focused on stopping multinational mining companies from pillaging the environment in countries such as Brazil. 

Much of the information they use in arguing their claims comes from Franciscans on the ground, in particular the extensive Franciscan presence in the Amazon. Taking a cue from Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si’” encyclical, Franciscans International has joined the international clamor for action on climate change that culminated in the Paris Accords. 

Father Joseph Rozansky, OFM, board president for Franciscans International, notes that Franciscans see up close the fallout from massive mining in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa, and Brazil. When mining operations degrade the local water supply or fail to treat workers justly, Franciscans ministering in those countries experience it firsthand and look for Franciscans International to galvanize world concern. 

Europe, North America, and Latin America 

Franciscans International has joined with others to promote a proposed law to eliminate poverty in the Canadian province of Quebec; worked with homeless families seeking land ownership in Uberlândia, Brazil; supported efforts by the local government in Strasbourg, France, to improve conditions for the Roma population there; and encouraged birth registration in the Amazon region of Bolivia, helping the government better plan the use of scarce resources. 

A group of Capuchin Franciscan friars in Boston is taking the idea of solidarity with the poor to a whole new level. 

Capuchin Franciscan friars in Boston challenged themselves to reimagine what it means to be in solidarity with the poor. Taking to heart the example of St. Francis of Assisi and the words of Pope Francis in his encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” they understand that to be true witnesses, they must do more than just care for the poor. 

As Pope Francis said in his message for the 2022 World Day for the Poor: “Where the poor are concerned, it is not talk that matters. What matters is rolling up our sleeves and putting our faith into practice through direct involvement, one that cannot be delegated.” 

Charity Is Not Enough

Pope Francis often uses examples from the life of St. Francis in his writings and reflections. In particular, he is drawn to the work of St. Francis around the poor and marginalized. For St. Francis, works of charity alone were not enough. St. Francis viewed the poor, sick, and marginalized not as people he should care for but as his brothers and sisters. Being in a relationship with them, how could he not do everything for them? Doing so transformed St. Francis. 

As Father Augustine Thompson, Dominican historian, writes: “It was a dramatic personal orientation that brought forth spiritual fruit. As Francis showed mercy to these outcasts, he came to experience God’s own gift of mercy to himself. As he cleaned the lepers’ bodies, dressed their wounds, and treated them as human beings, not as refuse to be fled from in horror, his perceptions changed. What before was truly ugly and repulsive now caused him delight and joy, not only spiritually, but viscerally and physically. Francis’ aesthetic sense, so central to his personality, had been transformed, even inverted. The startled veteran sensed himself, by God’s grace and no power of his own, remade into a different man. Just as suddenly, the sins that had been tormenting him seemed to melt away, and Francis experienced a kind of spiritual rebirth and healing” (Francis of Assisi: A New Biography). 

In “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis says of St. Francis, “Wherever he went, he sowed seeds of peace and walked alongside the poor, the abandoned, the infirm and the outcast, the least of his brothers and sisters.” 

Step Out of the Comfort Zone

The friars at the San Lorenzo Capuchin Friary in the Jamaica Plains area of Boston live in a poor section of the city. This means they were certainly engaged in activities centered around caring for the poor and were connected to many social service agencies in Boston. But something was missing. Those they served were, for the most part, faceless and nameless people. They were invisible street people. The friars knew they had to step out of their comfort zone and follow in the footsteps of St. Francis by finding a way to be one with their brothers and sisters on the street. 

Before designing and developing a program based on what they thought was best for the poor and marginalized, the friars decided to simply spend time and listen. Brother Paul Fesefeldt, drawing from his experience of living 10 years at a Catholic Worker house, spent six months researching and listening. He went to different areas in Boston where the homeless would congregate, and he listened. What Brother Fesefeldt and the other friars learned was that, while providing food was nice, there were several soup kitchens and food pantries where the homeless could go to be fed. What they really were looking for was to be welcomed, to be seen. The friars decided the best way they could serve these people was to set up what they described as a spiritual field hospital. So, they started the Capuchin Mobile Ministries. 

The friars understand that they are being welcomed into the living space of the homeless and marginalized. Their van opens in the back with a foldout table, which provides a space for hospitality. Members of local churches take turns making sandwiches. The friars go out three times a week. They travel to eight different spots around Boston, park the van, set up the table, and hang out. A couple of the friars walk around the area, letting people know they are there. 

During people’s first visit to the van, a friar asks their name and writes it in a notebook. Each time thereafter, the friars greet them by name. The friars take time to listen to their stories and build a relationship with the once- 
invisible, nameless, and marginalized people. The mission is not to just feed the homeless but to humanize them. They talk about it as solidarity at a whole different level. 

The Power of Being Seen

The friars give a bracelet with their phone number to all the guests who stop by. One day they received a phone call from the Boston Police. A homeless man was found dead, and the only thing identifying him was the bracelet. The police asked if the friars could identify the man, whom they only knew as Michael. A few days later, someone posted a poem about Michael on the community board. 

The friars got together with some other faith leaders in the area and had an impromptu memorial street service for Michael. A local media outlet heard and told the story about Michael. Later, the friars got a phone call from a relative of Michael who had heard the story. Relatives had lost touch with Michael a year or so earlier. While they were very saddened over his death, they were so comforted and grateful to find out about the memorial service and hear that, while Michael was very troubled, he had friends among the friars who cared for him. 

St. Francis is often credited with telling people to preach the Gospel, using words when necessary. The Capuchin friars and their mobile van are the perfect example of how St. Francis proclaimed God’s word. 

In fact, we’ve been living with AI under different names for years. Google’s famous search algorithms? Driven by AI. Ever notice how Facebook or other platforms seem to know which items you are in the market for purchasing online? AI again. Even in 1997, when Yahoo was the search engine of choice, there were signs of AI’s evolution when IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer famously defeated chess champion Gary Kasparov. 

As with most technological advances, the most crucial question isn’t whether something can be done, but whether it should be done. If the leap forward has already happened or is happening in real time, then we need to explore how to use AI ethically, be ready for what happens if it is used for ill, and ask ourselves as a society, Is it too late to stop AI from going in the wrong direction? 

The Human Variable 

Fortunately, there are already many influential people, not the least of whom is Pope Francis, sounding the alarm on the possible harmful ramifications of AI. Though the pope has previously admitted to not knowing how to work a computer, his knowledge of ethics and human nature runs deep. So when he and other faith and thought leaders gate their optimism about technological developments with some concern, we should pay heed. 

“I am convinced that the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning has the potential to contribute in a positive way to the future of humanity,” Pope Francis said at a Vatican gathering of scientists and technology experts in March. “At the same time, I am certain that this potential will be realized only if there is a constant and consistent commitment on the part of those developing these technologies to act ethically and responsibly.” 

The word that grabs my attention from what the pope said is “potential.” AI, like many innovations brought about by humankind, is not innately good or bad, but the way it is used by people and to what ends determines its relative benefit or detriment to humanity. The phrase nuclear technology, for example, might make you think of atomic weapons or cataclysmic power plant failures such as Chernobyl or Fukushima. But it’s also tied to radiation treatments of cancer and efforts to bring potable water to impoverished regions of the world through desalination. 

Algor-Ethics

The pope is not alone in his assessment that the use of AI must include ethical considerations. Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, spoke at a July conference in Milan titled “The Future of Catholic Universities in the AI Age.” He pointed out that “mere training in the correct use of new technologies will not prove sufficient. It is not enough to simply trust in the moral sense of researchers and developers of devices and algorithms.” The cardinal seems to be suggesting that ethical guardrails need to be built into AI’s capabilities, an idea that has been coined algor-ethics. 

Although the cardinal was speaking about AI’s impact on places of higher learning, the moral implications of AI systems must be considered across all its applications. If the past is any indicator of the future—as it sadly tends to be—we’d do well to balance our enthusiasm for the promise of AI with a healthy dose of skepticism and caution. 

As much as I agree with the surgeon general’s diagnosis, I also think it’s incomplete. Yes, we’re lonely because we’re disconnected from each other, and we absolutely need to address those social issues. But nowhere in the 82-page report is there mention of another fundamental source of loneliness: that modern life has left us radically disconnected from the natural world as well. 

In my opinion, this form of loneliness affects our mental health just as much as our social disconnection. But it also causes us to exploit and abuse the rest of creation. And as we strip-mine it, deforest it, erode it, diminish its biodiversity, pave it over, overheat it, and fill it with our waste and pollution, it becomes harder and harder to be enchanted by the world—a vicious cycle. When was the last time you felt deeply connected to an industrial brownfield or a garbage dump? 

It doesn’t have to be this way. For 99.9 percent of our existence as a species, we were finely tuned to our environment because it was the only way we could survive. To have severed our meaningful, regular connection to the rest of the world, as we’ve done in the past few thousand and particularly the past few hundred years, is to go against every bit of genetic and cultural inheritance that we accrued as a species over our long evolution. But deep in our biological and spiritual DNA, we still have that latent capacity to reconnect. 

Short of a massive population crash, God forbid, we won’t solve our nature-loneliness dilemma by reverting to our hunter-gatherer ways. That option simply isn’t available to us anymore, especially because so many of us now live in urban environments, surrounded far more by human artifice than by natural wildness. 

Leading the Way

But there are ways to heal our disconnection, and faith traditions like ours can lead the way. Our Scriptures describe a world in which mountains and hills break into song, and trees clap their hands to praise their maker. Jesus, in the 19th chapter of Luke, said that if his disciples were silenced, the very stones would cry out. The Bible paints a picture in which all of God’s creatures—even rocks and hills and rivers—sing in the chorus of creation: embodying God, revealing God, and praising God. The whole world is alive! 

Likewise, Pope Francis has beautifully written about the interconnected, sacramental character of our world. In the Catholic imagination, God dwells within everything and is revealed in every part of the fabric of creation. Pope Francis’ namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, befriended birds and wolves and other creatures, and he called the moon his sister and the sun his brother. For him, everything was alive with God’s spirit, and he spent his life in ongoing conversation with these elements of creation. 

It’s one thing to connect with nature’s sacred aliveness if you’re hiking in the Sierras. As I wrote above, however, most of us spend most of our lives surrounded on every side by humanly made things. We live in buildings, we drive in cars, we use smartphones nonstop. But here, too, our faith tradition shows us that connection is possible. Think about the reverence we have for the sacred objects of our liturgical life. We bow before the bread and wine that are both fruit of the earth and the work of human hands. We have special reverence for the chalices, patens, altars, and other humanly made objects that are part of our worship. But such sacramental objects can help us to discover the sacredness of other things as well. 

St. Benedict, the father of monasticism, wrote in his Rule that even the everyday tools and utensils of the monastery should be treated with the same reverence and respect as the sacred vessels of the altar. Think about it: Every single humanly made thing we encounter is still made of God’s sacred earth. However much it’s been modified by human industry and technology, it’s still part of God’s creation and still carries that sacred life, that revelatory power. We just need eyes to see it. 

Eyes to See

If we really want to escape the loneliness caused by our disconnection from God’s creation, we’ll need to recover the mystic’s vision of a St. Francis, a St. Hildegard of Bingen, a Thomas Merton, who saw clearly the sacredness of the living world. We can’t manufacture such a vision; it will always be a gift from God, and its form and timing will never be something we can predict or control. 

But we can pray for such a gift, and we can hope for it. We can read and write poetry, appreciate and create fine art, make things with care and skill and love, all of which are wonderful ways to open our hearts to our kinship with the living world. Inspired by all of the Scripture references to living stones and to the altars made by Abraham and Jacob, I’ve been building a little cairn out in the woods behind our home with stones I find while hiking around our rugged property—one stone a day, every morning, as part of my prayer time. 

We’re lonely not only because of our disconnection from each other, but also because we’ve become blind to our connection with God’s creation, in all of its sacred aliveness. But as the Gospels describe it, our Savior is pretty good at opening the eyes of the blind. 

“Lord, please let me see!” 

Explore the Mundane

As a spiritual practice, choose any mundane object that you use regularly—a toothbrush, a cutting board, a television remote. See if you can sense how all the elements that make it up were once part of the earth: ores, chemicals, plant fibers, etc. Can you feel the sacred aliveness in them? 

If you tried the above exercise and can’t discern the spirit within the object, ask yourself: How did the making of this object preserve or extinguish its sacred aliveness and sacramental power? Let that question be one of the guides for what you purchase and use. 

The series ended in 2015 after the eldest son, Josh, admitted to molesting five girls, including some of his sisters. And in 2022, he was sentenced to over 12 years in prison for receiving and possessing child pornography. Amazon Prime’s Shiny Happy People, a three-part docuseries, charts the family’s rise and fall. 

As followers of the Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP), established by the Rev. Bill Gothard, the Duggars were the movement’s most powerful evangelists. IBLP promotes large families, modest dress, a husband’s authority over his wife, and faith-based homeschooling. Former adherents to the IBLP have called the group a cult and Gothard a charlatan. Yet each week on TLC, the Duggars promoted their agenda, which satisfied a collective itch: Even the most ardent fans were puzzled at their style of dress and ultra-conservative religious fervor. But as Shiny Happy People illustrates, under the glassy façade is real trauma that cannot be neatly put away. 

Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a psychologist and media expert, said our collective thirst to watch celebrities rise and fall is our modern-day gladiator games—and she isn’t wrong. We loved their ascent in popularity; and with collective bloodlust we relished their undoing. The series has as much to say about the fans as it does about the family. 

But it asks relevant questions as well: Is religious freedom more important than those harmed by religious leaders? What happens when spirituality spills over into coercive control? And perhaps most painfully: How complicit are we who give unsavory people a platform? 

Shiny Happy People is no tabloid exposé of a family in freefall, but a powerful look at moral injury and healing from it.

The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin 

Gwen Shamblin preached weight management through religious zeal. Her diet plan in the late 1990s and early 2000s was so successful, in fact, that it spawned best-selling books and helped build a church that Shamblin ran—Remnant Fellowship. But several apostates of the church claimed emotional and physical abuse, bringing the diet fad and its founder into question.

Produced and directed with confidence by Marina Zenovich, The Way Down plunges viewers into a wild world of scandal, religion, and weight loss. The most fascinating and elusive figure in the documentary is Shamblin herself, who tragically died in a plane crash in 2021. Was she a Moses-like figure leading her people out of obesity or a pied piper for the gullible? You be the judge.