From the Lab to the Classroom 

Sister Mary Elizabeth grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as one of five sisters with one brother. As a youth she spent hours reading in a tree in her backyard. She attended Catholic elementary school and high school. At the latter, she fell in love with the sciences, particularly biology, chemistry, and physics. 

She studied science at the University of Notre Dame before getting an education degree from St. Mary’s College (Notre Dame, Indiana). “I loved going to school,” Sister Mary Elizabeth says. “That was exciting for me.” Her first job out of college was working in a research laboratory. As a woman in a male-dominated field, she earned the respect of her colleagues. 

“There was a little bit of trouble in the adjustment, not me, but with the guys, until one big piece of machinery broke down,” she says. “I rolled up my sleeves and grabbed a wrench and climbed up on it and fixed it. After that, it was kind of smooth sailing.” 

While recuperating from a work-related allergic reaction, she visited St. Louis. She met her friend and her friend’s friend, a nun, and visited the St. Louis Arch. Sister Mary Elizabeth commented to her friends that if she were ever to teach, she’d bring the students to the arch to see a real-life example of a catenary arch. 

A month later she got a call from the principal of an all-girls academy in St. Louis offering her a job. She accepted and began her career as a science teacher. She taught chemistry at first and later introduced a physics curriculum to the school. Sister Mary Elizabeth moved back to Indiana to teach at another high school to be closer to her father who was battling cancer. There, at St. Joseph High School in South Bend, she began to feel the call to religious life. 

A Franciscan Sister of the Sacred Heart visited the high school seeking potential candidates from the student body. Sister Mary Elizabeth saw an advertisement for a retreat hosted by the sisters and felt it was a good opportunity. “I thought, ‘That’ll be a way for me to kind of figure out what my life’s about.’ I didn’t know it was a retreat for vocations! So, at the end of the weekend, they said, ‘We like what we see. Would you consider entering?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, no way!’ That wasn’t what I was searching for at the time.” 

A few years later, Sister Mary Elizabeth picked up a summer course and, as if by providence, two Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart were in the class. She helped tutor the sisters in science and was impressed by their way of life. At age 29, she joined. “[I liked] their joy, their welcoming spirit, and just great sense of humor,” Sister Mary Elizabeth recalls. “They did education. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll do that.’” 

Teaching as Ministry 

Sister Mary Elizabeth was able to spend the first part of her vowed life studying the writings of St. Francis, but soon she returned to teaching. She was assigned to teach chemistry and physics at Bishop Luers High School in Fort Wayne. The school was run by the Franciscan Friars of the then-St. John the Baptist Province. “They stirred my spirit,” she says. “We just had a lot of fun.” After Sister Mary Elizabeth taught for several years, the sisters sent her to study spiritual direction. She already served as a mentor for students, but this gave her the opportunity to deepen those connections. “Those aha moments were just really precious for me,” says Sister Mary Elizabeth. “When [students] would catch on to something, whether it was, ‘What does it mean to be a saint?’ or Einstein’s theory or how a telephone works. I just love that.” 

With a background now in spiritual direction, Sister Mary Elizabeth and a friend established the Portiuncula Center for Prayer, which has since developed into a well-known retreat center. Soon after, Sister Mary Elizabeth was elected to lead the community as general minister. 

She served two five-year terms in the role. In the first five years, Sister Mary Elizabeth brought many new ideas. In the second term, she felt called to lead a different way. “It was just a marvelous sense of conversion,” she says. “I still did leadership, but I had a sense of it being sort of just the opposite of [the first term]. The congregation really led me.” 

Sister Mary Elizabeth served as the president of the Franciscan Federation in 2008, continued providing spiritual direction, and earned a master’s degree in Franciscan studies from St. Bonaventure University. After her terms in office, she taught at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois, for 14 years. She has also led many pilgrimages to Assisi. Today, she is once again general minister of the congregation. After more than 40 years in ministry as a science teacher, spiritual director, pilgrimage guide, and community leader, Sister Mary Elizabeth has a unique view on faith and science. She views the two—sometimes seen as incompatible disciplines—as different sides of the same coin. 

“The Franciscan tradition embraces all of that,” she says. “I love to see the tension of the sciences and our faith tradition because I think that pushes both of them to search for the truth. They help each other limp along.” Through her journey as a scientist, educator, and Franciscan leader, Sister Mary Elizabeth exemplifies a life where faith and reason walk hand in hand. 

A Franciscan spirit and the changes of the Second Vatican Council would lead her on a remarkable journey. 

Becoming a Franciscan 

Sister Kathy was educated by the Franciscan Sisters of Rochester, Minnesota. Her teachers inspired her with their good humor, deep faith, and ability to impart knowledge. The more Sister Kathy looked into religious life as a vocation, the more she felt called to it. In 1968, she joined and never looked back. 

“I can’t say that I ever regretted not being married or having children, because my life has been so rich and so full, and I’ve got so many wonderful people in my life,” she says. “I have the deepest gratitude for my Franciscan vocation because everything has happened because of it. I think part of the Franciscan way of life is to really know that our primary responsibility in life is to listen to the invitation of God constantly.” 

The Franciscan Sisters of Rochester were founded in 1877 and were initially a teaching order. They branched into the health-care field and had a substantial hand in the founding of the Mayo Clinic. For most of their history, teaching and health care were the primary focus. 

When Sister Kathy entered the fold, the Church was just three years past the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, which, among other things, called for renewal of religious life. In a previous decade, she’d have become a teacher or a nurse, but the council opened doors to a variety of other ministries. Sister Kathy says it was an exciting time, with sisters taking on roles in parish ministry, justice and peace, social work, and more. 

Early Ministry in a Changing Church 

After final vows, Sister Kathy was assigned to an eight-parish group in southwestern Minnesota. Five priests and four sisters shared the ministerial load. Sister Kathy was responsible for teaching the parish catechists, who then taught the youth. The landscape of Church life, particularly for religious sisters, was changing. 

“It was a wonderful time of lay and religious and clergy sharing the ministry of the Church,” she says. “That gave me a taste of what [Vatican II] was holding out to the Church [as a whole] in terms of expanding leadership in the Church and being much more inclusive.” 

She also worked in the Diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota. Bishop Raymond Lucker, recognizing the priest shortage, was an early adopter of appointing non-ordained religious to parish management. Several sisters were given roles as parish administrators, working with priests as sacramental ministers. 

Sister Kathy sees the efforts of the Franciscan Sisters of Rochester and those of other Franciscan communities as leading forces in promoting the renewal of the Catholic Church through the Second Vatican Council. Renewal, after all, is a Franciscan calling card. 

“It goes right back to our founder,” Sister Kathy says. “When St. Francis of Assisi was going through his long conversion process, he was trying to figure out what God was inviting him to. . . . It started with Francis, and Franciscans really have been on the vanguard, throughout the history of the Church, of Church renewal in rebuilding.” 

Sister Kathy also served as the sisters’ vocations minister and novice minister. She used that time to dig deeper into Franciscan spirituality. Her next role took her to New Jersey on the team of Renew International, a Catholic organization dedicated to connecting personal faith and parish life. Her work affected faith development in the Philippines, Ghana, Nigeria, India, and Ireland, where Renew International programs were put into practice. 

Fortuitous Timing

In 2000, Sister Kathy began studying for a master’s degree in Franciscan studies at St. Bonaventure University’s Franciscan Institute. Her studies included a focus on interreligious interaction through a Franciscan lens. The next year 9/11 happened, and the topic of interreligious dialogue, particularly between Christians and Muslims, came to the forefront. Sister Kathy turned her study into a book, Daring to Cross the Threshold: Francis of Assisi Encounters Sultan Malek Al-Kamil (Wipf and Stock). 

The story of St. Francis and the sultan has captivated imaginations for centuries, and it remains for Sister Kathy a source of inspiration and an example of how to share the faith. 

“St. Francis wanted to share the beauty of the Gospel and the message of the Gospel with the sultan,” she says. “But I think one of the unique features of Francis is that he realized it was not his job to convert the sultan. Conversion comes from God. I believe that among the Muslim people, Francis truly found the presence of God there in their prayer life, in their treatment of each other, and certainly in their treatment and welcome of him into the camp.” 

Today, Sister Kathy is the director of the Office of Women Religious for the Diocese of San Diego. In this position, Sister Kathy serves as liaison between her bishop, Cardinal Robert McElroy, and the 175 women religious from about 30 different congregations in the diocese. She also has a separate role leading pilgrimages to Assisi and Rome. 

Sister Kathy gathers the women religious several times a year for enrichment, reflection, and to address current events requiring their response. In recent years, the topic of immigration and border concerns has been discussed as well as Church concerns such as the Synod of Bishops on synodality. 

“I’ve been here in San Diego for seven wonderful years,” she says. “I find this to be a most dynamic, exciting, and grace-filled ministry.” 

The Friars Club was founded in 1860 in Cincinnati and provides a safe place for youth to develop through organized sports, leadership programming, and education. Timmons came along just over a century later. Timmons was a high school senior looking for work when she saw a posting for a summer camp director. 

Father Maynard Tetreault, OFM, was the director of the Friars Club from 1968 to 1981. He was hesitant to hire someone so young, but he brought the 18-year-old Timmons on board. From that day, she never really left. It turns out that it was God’s plan she was on, and not her own. 

In 1978, Timmons was dreaming about being a professional volleyball player, but an injury ended her athletic career. She later would become a successful basketball referee who caught the attention of the NBA. But that wasn’t to be either. 

“The Friars Club, I felt, was always my backup plan,” Timmons says. “And it wasn’t until a few years back when I realized it was never the backup plan. It was always God’s plan.” 

After that first summer, Timmons went to college at Mount St. Joseph University (then the College of Mount St. Joseph) in Cincinnati, all the while working as a front desk clerk and sometimes maintenance worker for the Friars Club. She moved up the ranks to executive director and eventually became the organization’s president. 

Early on in her relationship with the Friars Club, Timmons fell on some hard times. She grew up in an economically distressed neighborhood of Cincinnati called Corryville with her grandmother and sisters. She and her sisters attended Catholic school. When financial instability followed her into young adulthood, the Franciscans came through, treating her as one of their own family. 

“I had a tough situation,” Timmons says. “My grandmother went to a senior home. I didn’t really have a home, so I was always moving. It was always hard paying bills. . . . I ended up with a lot of bills. I just remember one day I told Brother Alex about my bills. Next thing I know, Father Maynard took care of everything for me. I was just thankful.” 

The Friars Club Ministry 

When the Friars Club of Cincinnati started in 1860, its purpose was to keep the children of German immigrants busy and safe during after-school hours. The mission remains unchanged, though the clientele has become much more diverse. 

Children ages 4 to 17 of all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds come to the Friars Club. Some years, more than 1,000 students are served by the club’s programming. 

“We do the sports—volleyball, basketball, baseball. We have a learning center in the back,” Timmons says. “We have a summer camp. That’s a couple of weeks that we really work with academics and social-emotional learning. We do a lot for the kids. We try to offer as much as we can to help them and to support them on their journey through their childhood, to get through to high school and then adulthood.” 

Some children served by the Friars Club have been impacted by community violence. Timmons noted the surge in shooting incidents around Cincinnati in the summer as an important marker, showing the need for the Friars Club ministry. 

“When you talk about the city of Cincinnati and the shootings and the killings that happen every day, it’s critical and important that we continue our mission of just providing a safe place where kids can get life skills and opportunities. That’s what we do.” 

The Friars Club has six employees and more than 100 volunteers. 

“We have rich kids, Black kids, White kids, poor kids,” she says. “If you are a two-parent family, we are an extension of that. I think we continue to promote and support what you’re doing with your kids. But then again, there’s that other percentage of sometimes 45, maybe 50, sometimes 55 percent of kids that are from single-parent homes or kids who don’t have parents. So, our coaches are our parents. They’re helping to parent, they’re helping to lead, they’re helping to teach—and, in today’s world, it’s just critical.” 

A Franciscan Approach 

Throughout her 45 years with the Friars Club, Timmons has seen seasons where Franciscans were more visible or less visible to the students they serve. As a sponsored ministry of the former St. John the Baptist Province, and through the staff, the Franciscan presence is felt. 

“[The Franciscans] are always involved and will continue to be involved through me, and through the people who volunteer because of how we serve,” Timmons says. “I’m always preaching respect. The four values [of the Friars Club] are respect, responsibility, leadership, and good sportsmanship. But in general, the respect value to me is the value of the Franciscans, the value of community, the value of the underserved. Our whole mission is to give kids an opportunity to be OK, to give kids an opportunity to grow up.” 

Father Mark Soehner, OFM, praises the work done at the Friars Club under Timmons’ management. 

“I remain impressed by the persistent energy of Friars Club,” he says, “whether it’s the energy of the very young players, their shouts of joy and competition, the flow of tears over a mistake or loss, or the energy of its executive director, Annie Timmons. Annie has been the face of Friars Club.”