2013 Judge Memorial CHS graduate professes temporary vows as Benedictine monk

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Brother Basil (Louis) Franciose, OSB, a Salt Lake City native, shown with Abbot Mark Cooper, OSB, has professed simple vows as a monk of St. Anselm Abbey in New Hampshire.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — A Catholic education changed Louis Franciose in ways he couldn’t have imagined when he first began attending Judge Memorial Catholic High School.

Franciose was baptized a member of United Church of Christ and was active in his faith growing up. He attended public school until his high school years. Then he was drawn to Judge Memorial because his sister Josie, who is 10 years older, had been a student there. After visiting the school and talking with his parents, he enrolled as a sophomore.

“I wanted a bit of a change and I liked studying religion,” he said. “My Mormon friends talked about their own faith but I couldn’t glean much about what the United Church of Christ believed and that didn’t really satisfy me. To go to Judge and study a religion might be nice, I thought.”

At Judge, Franciose not only studied the Catholic faith, he became very close to the school’s campus minister, Pete Espil, who was a Benedictine oblate. Before long, the two were praying the Divine Office together.

At the end of his sophomore year, when Franciose attended the baccalaureate Mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, “I was, to say the least, taken aback by its beauty. It very much pulled at my sensibilities,” he said.

Although he didn’t know what he was feeling at the time, he definitely wanted to experience it again, he said. After that his faith journey moved slowly but surely. In addition to praying with Espil, Franciose began to attend Mass on his own at St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center.

“It was all under the radar, if you will,” he said. “I didn’t tell anyone, particularly my parents; I was basically sneaking off to go to Mass.”

At St. Catherine’s, Franciose did not go unnoticed; one of the priests there approached him and when he said he was not even Catholic, expressed puzzlement.

“He pointed at the tabernacle and asked me what I thought was in there,” Franciose said. “If I said ‘Jesus,’ then clearly I needed to make a decision about conversion.”

“Then I thought ‘Maybe it actually is Jesus in the tabernacle and the Holy Spirit is prompting me. It seems like I have a handle on the Catholic thing; if it walks and talks like a duck, then it might actually be a duck,’” he said.

With the support of his parents, Franciose began attending Mass regularly, and in April 2012 he was confirmed by Monsignor Joseph M. Mayo, then rector of the Cathedral of the Madeleine. He graduated from Judge the following year and, because of his positive experience there, sought out a small Catholic college to continue his education.

He settled on Saint Anselm College, a Benedictine liberal arts institution in Manchester, N.H. While pursuing a bachelor’s degree in theology, he became very involved in the college’s monastic community and in the Knights of Columbus, but still held himself somewhat apart. While he felt drawn to the contemplative way of life of the Benedictines, he felt restless, he said, and joined a Franciscan group in Boston.

When the Franciscans went on a retreat to Saint Anselm’s he was very excited to introduce the monastery and campus to them. It was then, while sitting in a stall next to the friars praying, that he had what he calls “a St. Paul moment, where the scales were falling off my eyes.”

“‘What am I doing? God wants me here,’ I thought,” he said. “‘Everyone sees it before you.’ So to no one’s surprise, I asked about joining the community not long after.”

In March 2018 Franciose became a Benedictine postulant, and this year on July 11 (both the feast of St. Benedict and his 25th birthday) he professed temporary vows as a monk of Saint Anselm Abbey. He wanted to take the name Benedict but the community already had a monk by that name, so he chose Basil, after St. Basil the Great, who had a strong influence on St. Benedict.

After three years as a junior monk, if he so chooses he will petition the monastic community to profess solemn vows and become a permanent member of the order. In the meantime, he will study theology at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Mass. He will live on campus and return to the monastery in New Hampshire for the weekends for the next four years.

What will come next will depend on how his seminary formation goes, he said. He would like to continue his education and get a PhD so he can teach at St. Anselm’s, but his future will depend on the assignment he is given by the abbot to whom he has taken a vow of obedience. Whatever the assignment, “there will be work, good work to do and people to minister to,” he said.

Brother Basil has no regrets about his choice to enter religious life.

“God brought me to this place, and he will be the one to sustain me here,” he said. “I’m very happy in the monastery. I have a certain set of gifts and talents God has given me that are very much usable in this work.”

“I am very, very lucky to be able to say at 25 years old that I have found where God wants me to live out my life, to have a positive effect on the lives of others,” he added.