Saint Francis Inn

                       Saint Francis Inn, Kensington

In 1960, I signed up to be a lay teacher at a Jesuit mission high school in a place called Above Rocks. While there, I was asked to be a dormitory prefect for 110 boys from Jamaica and from other countries in Central and South America. Sharing these duties was a great guy, Mike Duffy, who was a graduate of Boston College and from Ashland, NH. After spending a year with us, Mike joined the order of  Franciscans. One of his Franciscan brothers, Mychal Judge ofm became famous as the fire chaplain of the NYCFD, and was one of the first killed when the World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11. His funeral was celebrated at St. Patrick's Cathedral and Mike Duffy was selected by Fr. Judge to deliver his eulogy.  

https://www.funeralwise.com/plan/eulogy/judge/
 


For the last thirty years, Mike Duffy has been the chaplain for Saint Francis Inn in the Kensington section of inner city Philadelphia. Recently he gave a talk about his work with the poorest and most shunned of the poor that receive food and counsel from the Inn and from its dedicated staff of priests, nuns, laity and especially dedicated young college graduates who give a year of more to this work.
In light of the teachings of Pope Francis and his way with the poor, I thought it would be good to post mike Duffy's recent talk on the "Merciful" work of the Church.

https://vimeo.com/124961314

Mike would never forgive me if he thought that this constituted my attempt at beatifying him, but I felt this would be two great lessons on living our life to a different drumbeat, God's.

                   
                                                                                                                              Charlie Mc