Bro. Richard Phillip, OFM, knows both sides of the St. Francis Inn, the Franciscan soup kitchen in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. It’s a neighborhood where the toll of addiction is clearly evident, a place known for widespread alcoholism and the ravages of drug abuse played out on the streets.
At one time, he was a client, finding a place to eat while recovering from the ravages of addiction. At other times, he’s been the server, acting out his Franciscan vocation to help the desperate.
Now a student at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, he professed solemn vows as a friar at St. Clement’s Church in Cincinnati this summer. At 47, his path has been a long and winding one, at times torturous, at other times redemptive.
He is from Westville, New Jersey.
“I moved around a lot,” he said, describing an unstable family, where he endured a stepfather who drank too much. He attended four high schools in the South Jersey area and, at the age of 16, legally emancipated himself from his family. He dropped out of school, began receiving a Social Security check and a job at a kosher meat processing plant, and found himself with what he describes as too much money for a teenager.
“I fell into the wrong crowd,” he said. At the time, he would travel to the Kensington neighborhood to score drugs.
On the road to nowhere, he left for California, joined the Navy, and found the temptations of military life overwhelming.
“The services are often not the best place to stop addiction,” he recalled.
Upon his discharge from the Navy, he took a series of jobs in nursing care facilities, where the pay was small and the work hard. Through it all, from his time in California to his return to South Jersey, he learned to enjoy the task of helping others, and even began training for a nursing career. Then, “everything fell apart” as his addictions consumed him.
“At that point I gave up hope. I got tired of fixing things up and then having it fall apart,” he said, noting that for a time he ended up on the streets. Then his younger brother Steve begged him to start again. It was a time Richard began to recognize that there were people who loved him, although he didn’t love himself.
He ended up under the tutelage of an Alcoholics Anonymous mentor who ran a clubhouse for recovering addicts across the street from St. Francis Inn. He got sober, walked to the Inn for some lunches, and volunteered to help out. It was then that he heard the friars talk about God and religious vocation.
At the time, he recalled, “I was furious at God because he sat silent and did nothing” about his pain. His AA sponsor asked him to write down who God was to him, and he started scribbling notations that projected an entirely different view, indicating that God is love. He found himself praying regularly and seeking solitude. A friar at the Inn noticed and suggested he might have a religious vocation.
“I had no idea what he was talking about,” said Richard.
Bro. Richard entered the community, after a few more years of searching for religious community and paying off debts he incurred, ended up with the friars in Philadelphia. He’s been a a part of the friars for more than a decade, and noted he has maintained sobriety for more than a dozen years.
He has worked in ministry with addicts and alcoholics with the St. Anthony Foundation in San Francisco. He would like to be ordained a priest and open what he describes as a sober living environment, with 12-step programs, Mass and Catholic spirituality made available to a community which struggles with addictions.
Looking back on a complex story, weaving his struggles together into a narrative, Bro. Richard said he is where he is supposed to be. His studies will continue, as his life as a Franciscan continues to develop. Life as a college seminarian in Chicago is a long way from the streets of Kensington. He is grateful.
“It’s God’s will. This is where he wanted me,” he said. His future, he said, “will come to be known as I live this life a little more.”
