Капуцины: История и Деятельность Францисканского Ордена

Religious order of Franciscan friars
Besides the canonical choral celebration of the Divine Office, a portion of which was recited at midnight, there were two hours of private prayer daily. The fasts and disciplines were rigorous and frequent. Their main external work was preaching and spiritual ministrations among the poor. In theology the Capuchins abandoned the later Franciscan School of Scotus and returned to the earlier school of St. Bonaventure.

At the outset of its history, the Capuchins underwent a series of severe blows. Two of the founders left it: Matteo Serafini of Bascio (Matteo Bassi) returning to the Observants, while his first companion, on being replaced in the office of Vicar Provincial, became so insubordinate that he had to be expelled from the Order. Even more scandalously, the third Vicar General, Bernardino Ochino, left the Catholic faith in 1543 after fleeing to Switzerland, where he was welcomed by John Calvin, became a Calvinist pastor in Zürich, and married. Years later, claims that he had written in favor of polygamy and Unitarianism caused him to be exiled from that city and he fled again, first to Poland and then to Moravia, where he died. As a result, the whole province came under the suspicion of heretical tendencies and the Pope resolved to suppress it. He was dissuaded with difficulty, but the Capuchins were forbidden to preach.

Despite earlier setbacks, the authorities were eventually satisfied as to the soundness of the general body of Capuchin friars and the permission to preach was restored. The movement then began to multiply rapidly, and by the end of the 16th century the Capuchins had spread all over the Catholic parts of Europe, so that in 1619 they were freed from their dependence on the Conventual Franciscans and became an independent Order. They are said to have had at that time 1500 houses divided into fifty provinces. They were one of the chief tools in the Catholic Counter reformation, the aim of the order being to work among the poor, impressing the minds of the common people by the poverty and austerity of their life, and sometimes with sensationalist preaching such as their use of the supposedly possessed Marthe Brossier to arouse Paris against the Huguenots. The activities of the Capuchins were not confined to Europe. From an early date they undertook missions to non Catholics in America, Asia and Africa, and a college was founded in Rome for the purpose of preparing their members for foreign missions. Due to this strong missionary thrust, a large number of Capuchins have suffered martyrdom over the centuries. Activity in Europe and elsewhere continued until the close of the 18th century, when the number of Capuchin friars was estimated at 31,000.

Like all other Orders, the Capuchins suffered severely from the secularizations and revolutions of the end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th; but they survived the strain, and during the latter part of the 19th century rapidly recovered ground. In Great Britain there are currently five Capuchin friaries, and eight in Ireland. The worldwide head of the Order, called the Minister General, is currently Friar Roberto Genuin.

The Capuchin order, under the leadership of Italian Capuchin priest Giuseppe Maria Bernini, took part in the European colonization of India as missionaries and founded the community of Bettiah Christians.

The United States has six provinces throughout the country. Together with the two provinces in Canada, the province of Australia and the Custody of the Mariana Islands/Hawaii they form the North American Pacific Capuchin Conference (NAPCC).

The Province of St. Joseph, originally the province of Calvary, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, was one of the first two Capuchin Provinces to be established in the country in 1882. It was founded by Francis Haas (1826–1895) and Bonaventure Frey (1831–1912), two Swiss diocesan priests who arrived in the United States in September 1856, and were received into the then Diocese of Milwaukee by Bishop John Henni, also a Swiss immigrant, and given charge of St. Nicholas Parish which they renamed Mount Calvary. They were later admitted to the Capuchin Order on December 2, 1857, by Antoine Gauchet of the Swiss Province who had been sent to admit them in order to establish the Order in the United States. The friars started St. Lawrence Seminary High School in 1861 at Mount Calvary, Wisconsin, a school that is still owned and operated by the Capuchin Order. One of the friars of this province, Solanus Casey, was noted for the holiness of his life, serving as the porter of several Capuchin friaries both in Michigan and New York City for decades. As a miraculous healing attributed to him was approved by Pope Francis in mid 2017, he was beatified in Detroit at Ford Field on November 18, 2017. This is significant because Casey could become the first male American born Saint in the history of the Catholic Church. He had previously been declared Venerable in 1995 by Pope John Paul II. His tomb is in St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit, and is visited by thousands every year. as of 2011, the province has 23 communities spread throughout the American Midwest, reaching from Michigan to Arizona. Additionally, there are friars of this province working in Central America, with a community serving in the Middle East.

St. Joseph or Calvary (1882), based in Detroit, Michigan, covering the upper Midwest, from Detroit to Montana and from which came Blessed Solanus Casey. St. Augustine (1882), based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to which Cardinal Sean O'Malley belongs. Stigmata (ca. 1913), based in Union City, New Jersey, founded by friars from the Tuscan region of Italy with 8 communities on the East Coast, with friaries in Beacon, New York, Hackensack, New Jersey, Hoboken, New Jersey, Wilmington, Delaware (2), Atlanta, Georgia, and Miami, Florida. St. Mary of New York and New England (1952), based in White Plains, New York, with 18 fraternities on the East Coast, covering New England and New York. They supervise the Custody of Japan and the Custody of Guam. St. Conrad or Mid America (1977), based in Denver, Colorado, serving Illinois, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and Texas, with missionaries in Papua New Guinea; a friar of this province, Charles J. Chaput, was installed as the Archbishop of Philadelphia on 8 September 2011. Our Lady of Angels (1979), Western America, based in Burlingame, California. Seven communities in California, with four communities in Mexico which became the Custody of St. Juan Diego in December 2011. Star of the Sea Custody (1982), Hawaii and Guam, this division is dependent on St. Mary Province.

The Capuchin Poor Clares are cloistered nuns of the Order of St. Clare, who form the female branch of the Capuchin Order. They were founded in 1538 in Naples by the Venerable Maria Laurentia Longo, who was Abbess of the Poor Clare monastery of that city. She and the other nuns of that community embraced the then new Capuchin reform movement, and so austere was the life that they were called "Sisters of Suffering". The Order soon spread to France, Spain and beyond. They live according to the same rules and regulations as the Capuchin friars, and are held as members of the friars' provinces. In the United States, as of 2012, there are five monasteries of this Order. There are about 50 nuns in these communities, which are located in: Denver and Pueblo in Colorado, Alamo and Amarillo (the first, founded 1981) in Texas, and Wilmington, Delaware. The monasteries were almost all founded from Mexico, where there are some 1,350 Capuchin nuns in 73 monasteries. The monastery in Pueblo is a foundation of the monastery in Amarillo. Together they form the Federation of Our Lady of the Angels.

The Capuchins are unique for a Catholic religious order in that the growing of natural, untrimmed beards features as part of its first Constitution, which states as the reason, the beard is "manly, austere, natural, an imitation of Christ and the saints of our Order, and despised." This makes the Capuchin friars stand out in particular from the secular clergy of the Latin Church, who have no rule on such matters. In more recent times, since the Second Vatican Council, the beard has no longer been mandatory but is still common. Like other Franciscans, the friars wear a plain brown tunic with a hood, a cord fastened around the waist, and sandals (or shoes).