Canada’s OFM Franciscans aren’t facing a vocations emergency, but they do have a problem — the same problem many dioceses and religious orders of priests face across Canada.

WASHINGTON -- The oven timer dings, alerting Capuchin Franciscan Br. Andrew Corriente the chocolate layer cake he is baking needs to be checked.

Poverty isn’t always misfortune or bad luck. Sometimes it’s a vocation.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis advanced the sainthood causes of nine men and women, including a Franciscan priest who championed the land rights of farmers in Guatemala.

They were commonly known as Recollects when their first four members landed 400 years ago with New France founder Samuel de Champlain.

VATICAN CITY - Ineffective budgetary oversight and "questionable" financial activities have plunged the Order of Friars Minor into significant debt and an extremely serious financial situation, its minister general said.

CALEDON, ONT. - There’s no such thing as Catholicism for the few. Catholic means universal, and Secular Franciscans declared their intention to take their message out to the known universe as they inaugurated a new fraternity at the first ever Franciscan Family Fest at Mt. Alverno Retreat Centre June 24.

Deacon Michael Robertson is one of the founders of the new group of lay Franciscans. He describes it as “a new option to offer people who might want to take their spiritual life beyond the norm.”

Young and Catholic? That's not good enough for the latest Catholic youth group to start up in English-speaking Canada. For YouFra, the youth wing of the Secular Franciscans, you have to want to change the world — starting with yourself.

"It's about being with and being together and doing together," said YouFra member Kendal Freeman.

The 24-year-old master's student at Antioch University in New Hampshire was attracted to YouFra because she found in St. Francis somebody willing to talk about how the world is and how the world should be.