2024 Conference

Theme: Sursum Corda: Lifting Up Our Hearts in a Time of Crisis

Brother Lawrence Mary, M.I.C.M.,Tert — Brother Francis — Crusader for Our Lady Seat of Wisdom

Born in Lebanon to a presbyterian mother and a freemasonic father; raised to pride himself on being the only unbaptized child in his village; teacher of physics at the age of eighteen in the American University of Beirut — our Br. Francis, M.I.C.M. (Fahkri Maluf) has a life story that has long needed to be written. In this talk, Third Order Member Larry Koralewski, gives a preview into the riveting pages of the biography he is compiling on the man who would re-establish the Saint Benedict Center Crusade in Richmond, New Hampshire, nearly forty years after its turbulent birth in Cambridge.

Admirers of Br. Francis will be delighted to hear the anecdotes recounting how Fr. Feeney singled him out at Fahkri’s first-ever visit to the Center in 1942; and how this same holy priest facilitated Fahkri’s marriage to the girl of his dreams. Whether familiar or not with the role of Br. Francis in starting the Crusade and the legacy he bequeathed it after his death in 2009, no one who hears this talk can fail to be impressed with the many accounts here accounts of Brother’s zeal, perseverance, gratitude, simplicity, and genius.