Date of birth: January 27, 1927
Place of Birth: Bristol, PA
Temporary Profession: February 6, 1973
Perpetual Profession: February 9, 1976
Date of death: June 12, 2011
"All I can say is that if God could get to me,
he can get to anybody.
He gave me a hope and a future." -- Br. Jim
There are very few friars in our history who have their names found as frequently on Internet search engines as our brother Jim Townsend. It's hardly ironic that a man who loved to relish in story-telling would have his own story repeated so often and in so many various contexts. Jim sat at friary dinner tables and told stories about himself; he would stand before audiences of hundreds of people and tell stories about himself; and he would stand in the local grocery store or in parking lots talking to people and telling stories about himself. His story is now being recounted by many people who have never even met him or talked to him.
It is a dramatic story.
Maybe some people are into the story because it's also alluringly "sensational." Who doesn't take some "guilty pleasure" in hearing about murders and criminals and victims and justice. But Jim never really wanted to be "sensational." Jim wanted his story to be known because he wanted to let people know that our God saves, even if his salvation did not appear to him precisely in the form for which he had originally hoped.
Jim had a different childhood from most friars. His family wasn't a particularly religious, church-going family. He was born in Bristol, PA, a town in eastern Pennsylvania, on January 27, 1927, but his was not an easy childhood. His mother, Catherine Hawkene Townsend ("Kit") was chronically ill and spent most of her time in a bed in the downstairs parlor of their home. His father, Patrick, was not a man who showed much affection and tended to treat his oldest son harshly. Perhaps as a dad, it was easier to treat the other four children more kindly. Jim was not a boy who took discipline easy. He himself would frame his childhood as marked by a rage against and an envy of his younger brother, Bob. Whatever the cause, Jim was always getting into trouble: stealing and fights were common. It wasn't any wonder that he entered a reform school at 8.
Returning from reform school at age 10, he was not welcome. His mom was to die within two years and his father sent him to an orphanage for the control and discipline he himself couldn't provide. Jim was sent back home for stealing money within a few months.
At the age of 14, Jim entered the Marines as World War II began, thanks to his father's ready signature on documents attesting to his being of age, but he continued to battle his demons and was court-martialed for hitting an officer while in training. Finally, he was sent to a juvenile detention center in Camp Hill, PA, on charges of assault, battery and attempted rape of a young girl.
Jim moved to Pittsburgh because of a parole officer he respected, just one of a few respected "father" figures who would be there at important signposts of his life. Getting a job at Allegheny General Hospital, he met his future wife, Alice Moss. They married in 1947 in a small Methodist Church in Pittsburgh soon after which Alice became pregnant with twins. The couple moved to Ohiopyle, PA, to work on the farm of a kind police officer who witnessed Jim's talent for working hard and completing a job. Unfortunately, a 19 year old husband who drank would not make an ideal husband or father. Jim's drinking only allowed his rage and envy to surface irrationally, and on November 13, 1947, he shot and killed his expectant wife with a deer rifle in the kitchen of their home. He was sentenced to life in prison and was consigned initially to Western Penitentiary.
A network news magazine story might end there: a story of the tragedy and despair of a violent man brought to justice. But God was just beginning to shape Jim's story, and he would often refer to God as "Slick," because he would eventually capture the captive's heart. God's justice is mercy, and that fact had yet to reveal itself.
He had heard that living conditions were less severe in Rockview State Penitentiary in Bellefonte, PA. His plan was to excel in good behavior and get his ticket out of "the Penn." He became the custodian of the chapel and would later work in the chaplain's office. Unwittingly, it was the first time he had to interact with prisoners on a personal level, hearing their stories and hearing so much of his own in them.
 Br. Jim's biographyby Paul Everett is available on Amazon |
Everything "came together" at Rockview. It was there that he met another mentor and confidante, Fr. Richard Walsh. Having joined the Order of Secular Franciscans as a further attempt to "play the part" of the good prisoner, he was obliged to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation regularly. It was in confession at Rockview where he bared his soul and brought his shadowy past before the Lord. He found a "brother" in Fr. Walsh who heard his story and brought God's forgiveness and compassion. Nightmares of his wife and of a "little boy" in her arms, which tormented him from that dark day in 1947, ended.
After 20 years as a prisoner, Jim was paroled for his "good behavior," and returned to Pittsburgh, PA. He maintained his connection to the Secular Franciscans, and through a member of the local fraternity, he met his first Capuchin friar, our brother Fr. Lester Knoll. Lester worked in the Vocation ministry centered at St. Francis Friary in Brookline (Pgh), PA. Jim had been inspired in prison by the story of the Trappist Thomas Merton and his change of life that led him to the monastery. Fr. Lester thought it best to take one step at a time. This was no ordinary vocational recruitment.
Beginning as an "associate member" of the Province in residence at the friary in Brookline, both Jim and the community were given time to sense the genuineness of God's call. Jim was invested as a Capuchin on February 6, 1972. He was 45 years old and spent his novitiate year with men who were half his age. He was never paternalistic or treated the other friars as though he had more "experience" than they did. He was a brother to them, and they recall him with a smile. Jim had never been to college -- and he finished high school only in prison. But Jim worked hard and led them in tasks that they would have preferred to avoid.
Making his first profession of vows in 1973, Br. Jim was assigned as Director of Maintenance at St. Fidelis High School Seminary in Herman, PA, where workers were welcome. He prided himself on a well-waxed floor and clean cars. He found prayer to be a constant place for solace and for peace, and he could enjoy a good story in the colloquy room as much as a rosary prayed in the Chapel. He supervised the student work program, and though the students encountered the details of Jim's "story" at some point in their years at St. Fidelis, they would only remember and know the friendly and humble friar who treated them with respect and kindness. If a student didn't know how to wax a floor, Jim would teach him. If he didn't do it correctly, Jim would do it for him, but you never heard Jim denounce or degrade someone for their lack of expertise. Yes, one would always risk becoming a part of his future story-telling, but he always talked about you with a smile and with a great respect for human diversity.
His perpetual profession was a foregone conclusion, given his own gifts and the ways that fraternal life and prayer were so important to him. The community acknowledged God' grace and call that had been operative in his heart for 20 years. Returning to the novitiate to direct the work program of the novices in 1975, he made his perpetual vows as a Capuchin there in 1976.
Br. Jim spent 40 years of his life as a Capuchin friar. His assignments would run the gamut of the Province from east to west. He was part of the first fraternity to minister in the Diocese of Cleveland at the Conversion of St. Paul Shrine downtown. The Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration there remember him as a man of work and prayer. He was also a man they relied on if they felt any danger or if someone wandered off the streets and into the church. Once, the extern sisters called him in the middle of the night because they heard some noises in the church -- Jim responded immediately, with a baseball bat in hand.
He continued to touch the men in formation as a model and as a brother. Whether it was the postulants in Cleveland, the novices in Annapolis, MD, the temporary professed friars in Washington, DC, or the high school students in Herman, PA, Br. Jim was an educator. He led people of little experience in the "world" to know about a God who was "nuts" for sinners.
Br. Jim loved sinners too. Very early in his religious life, at the invitation and provocation of his friend, Fr. Walsh, Jim would regularly visit Rockview Penitentiary to talk to his "fellow prisoners" about his experience with the Lord. It is said that he brought the hardest of hearts to tears as they heard their stories reflected in him and hoped for the kind of "salvation" that Jim had experienced.
Perhaps Jim's own favorite years were those in which he lived on the staff of the Capuchin Hermitage, begun near Herman, PA, in 1989 and concluding in Wheeling, WV, in 2001. It was during these years that Jim thrived. He loved his prayer time and the opportunity for spiritual reading. He would visit the children of the school at St. Mary's in Herman, and they would always find a warm embrace and a welcoming smile among them. When a Padre Pio statue was being erected shortly after Pio's beatification and canonization, the school children thought that it was a statue of Jim. Could Br. Jim ever imagine that little children would consider him worthy of such an honor?
It was in the Hermitage that Jim worked among the Secular Franciscans of Butler and in the Hermitage that he found a charismatic community and another way to express his joyful praise of God's goodness. His bout with colon cancer in 2001 was a blow to his energy and stamina, but only Jim would find a great opportunity for yet more tales of his colostomy and the various imperfections of medical apparatuses in its wake.
Health problems did not stop Brother Jim from his ministry to Rockview, where he continued to preach at the annual retreat. His dedication to the inmates of Rockview inspired the prison to rename the "Monsignor Walsh Award," which honors one prisoner at a banquet at the end of the retreat each year, the "Jim Townsend Award." It was a special honor for Brother Jim, who had received the award when he was a Rockview inmate.
Word of Jim's "conversion story" found a new outlet when a Lutheran Minister, the Reverend Paul Everett, visited the Hermitage and found the witness so compelling. His work, The Prisoner: An Invitation to Hope, was published in 2004 and has been cited and quoted in innumerable homilies, high school Religion classes and, yes, in prisons.
Some people who did not know Br. Jim or had never met him would almost reflexively question Jim's motivation and the genuineness of his conversion. One friar remembers substituting for a pastor whose parish was hosting Jim at the local CCD evening. When the students went home and recounted the story, the phone at the rectory continued to ring well into the evening with most calls lamenting how the parish would "dare" to invite a murderer and molester to speak to their children. Many would decry how a man "like that" could "hide" in a Religious Order when he should be spending his whole life in prison. But they did not know the man we knew; nor do they know the God we came to praise through Jim's words.
Jim's health forced him to return to Herman, PA, in 2001 and to fraternal service of the friary and the parish school. Eventually, he needed more care and was assigned to St. Augustine Friary in Pittsburgh in 2005. He is still missed for the odd jobs and undone tasks he would find to "help out."
As his health declined in 2011, he took up residence at Vincentian Home where he died with the nearby novices at his bedside, on June 12, 2011. Those who know Jim are absolutely sure that Jim died in the arms of His Father.
His good friend and confidante, Fr. Lester, spoke at his funeral of the Prodigal Son and of Jim's own fear of trusting in a loving Father who might receive him despite his reckless living and the hurts he had caused. "Trusting his Father took a lifetime," but in finding Him, Jim has shown us all a thing or two about mercy and redemption. The love and support Jim felt from his Capuchin brothers over the years enabled him to become more convinced that God really did love him just the way he was: he was an Irishman who liked to exaggerate a bit in story-telling, and he was a hard worker who took pride in a polished floor.
One of the ways Jim had kept sane while in prison was to keep track of the days. If you asked how old he was, he would never tell you in years -- he would tell you in months. Thanks to Lester's calculation, most friars can still smile to know that Jim was 1,014 months old when he died.
He was buried in the friars' plot of St. Mary Cemetery, Herman, PA, on June 15, 2011. We can only imagine the people who, through the books and the stories, are yet to learn of Jim's experience and share the story with others. Perhaps they will come upon his final resting place and continue to find there a testimony to God's Goodness and Mercy in the witness of a man who, so unexpectedly, was their most grateful recipient.