Les Amis du Père Caffarel

 

First of all, a little history about why Sharla and I, Rob fell in love with Fr. Caffarel. We entered Teams of Our Lady in 1997 and shortly after began to get bits and pieces about the life of the Founder of the Movement. It never seemed like enough material at one time, but just bits and pieces. It seemed reasonable to us that if we were to follow this Movement, we needed to make a concerted effort to learn about the Founder. One would not become a Jesuit or a Franciscan without knowing about the founder. So our search began. We read the beginnings of the movement and found many of the original documents such as Fr. Caffarel’s description of meeting the four couples and the first meetings. We then read most of what we could find from Jean Allemand, Fr. Paul Marcovits’, books that were available to us in English, such as Being Present to God, Letters on Prayer, Marriage is Holy and Love and Grace in Marriage. Unfortunately, for English speakers, English is one of the last languages that documents about Fr. Caffarel are translated into. 

Probably one of the most influential documents that we read was Fr. Caffarel’s talk at Chantilly, France on May 3, 1987.

It was no surprise to us that we desired to know more about Fr. Caffarel after reading these and many other documents, as it is upon these very points that we promote his Canonization process.

 

We are asked to do three basic things to promote his Canonization:

 

1. Pray daily the Prayer for Canonization for Fr. Caffarel www.henri-caffarel.org

 We are praying for the intercession of Fr. Caffarel for a miraculous healing that can be verified.

 

2. Promulgate the works and writings of Fr. Caffarel to all you know. The only way we can do this is to read about Fr. Caffarel ourselves.

 

3. Join the “Association of the Friends of Fr. Caffarel.”

 

We see in our natural response to our reading about Fr. Caffarel that we are drawn to pray daily, the Canonization Prayer, because we have begun to study his life and the Movement. Therefore, we encourage others to do the same, and walk down the path of knowledge of Father Caffarel. We see by our own experience, that we must, first of all, share our love of Fr. Caffarel and the Movement with conviction!!

 

These are some of the things we have chosen to do to draw additional interest in the Association of the Friends of Fr. Caffarel:

 

We found out that only 2700 copies of Being Present to God, Letters on Prayer were produced in English, with the translation done by Angeline Bouchard (an excellent translation), so we quickly realized that there was VERY limited availability to the English speaking world. Therefore, we began to transcribe the entire book into pdf format, with the permission of the Publishing Company attorneys, so that this could be put on our website. This took about two years to complete, but we have made available this treasure, to the English speaking world.

 

We also ordered 9’ tall retractable banners for each Province of the United States, in color, with an image of Fr. Caffarel and one of his pertinent quotes on the banner. We gave each Province the instructions to use this banner at all Regional Days, Sector Days or major events sponsored by the Province or Region to make sure there was an awareness of Fr. Caffarel.

 

We have printed 6400 copies of the Canonization Prayer in English, 1600 copies of the Canonization Prayer in Spanish and 1600 copies of the Canonization Prayer in Portuguese. Every new Piloting Book goes out with copies of the Canonization Prayer for each new couple on the new Team. 

 

We established a complete dropdown menu for Fr. Henri Caffarel showing Foundation of the Movement with links to his writings, the three stages of Fr. Caffarel’s ministry to Teams, a listing of his books available, articles written about and by Fr. Caffarel and a beautiful slideshow of Fr. Caffarel.

 

We have created a page on the website devoted entirely to “The Friends of Fr. Caffarel”, which contain copies of “The Bulletin” from November 2016 through July of 2019. On this page, we also have a copy of the prayer for the Canonization of Fr. Caffarel and a step by step process and approximate cost to join the Friends of Fr. Caffarel.

 

We have dedicated a full page in our USA Newsletter, “The Magnificat” to the Friends of Fr. Caffarel.

 

We have also encouraged, by sending out a list of quotes from Fr. Caffarel, to our Provincial and Regional couples, to attach to their communications to their couples

 

We established three days of special recognition of Fr. Caffarel for each year:

 

August 2, Anniversary of his Baptism

April 19th Anniversary of his Ordination

September 18 Anniversary of his Death

 

On these days, we would ask the couple and/or a Team to go to Mass together, sit before the Blessed Sacrament for one hour, say a Rosary, Chaplet of Divine Mercy, etc. 

 

We send out a direct email from us, as the Correspondent Couple for the USA Super Region, on each of the above anniversary dates requesting that the couples do one of the tasks above and renew their yearly subscriptions to the Friends of Fr. Caffarel at that time.

 

The Canonization Prayer for Fr. Caffarel can also be found on the www.henri-caffarel.org page.

 

We ask everyone, in Teams or otherwise, to say this Canonization prayer at every Team Meeting, just before the Magnificat Prayer or daily, if they are not Teams members.

 

We have also discussed celebrating the date of the very first Team meeting, February, 25th on an annual basis.

 

Sharla and I have spoken at the National Conference in Navasota, Texas on Fr. Caffarel and have given the periodic updates that we receive from you on the status of the Canonization process, number of miracles being examined, etc.

 

We have spoken at numerous Regional Days to speak about the awareness of Fr. Caffarel as "servant of God”, and the necessary requirements to move through this process toward Canonization .

 

Everywhere we go, we speak about the very minimal cost, but critical enrollment of joining the Friends of Fr. Caffarel and how the monies are used. We let couples know about the digitalization of thousands of documents, examinations of potential miracles or favors obtained through the intercession of Fr. Caffarel. We let the couples know that these are just a few of the costs in the Canonization process.

 

We instruct all couples to be aware of the process of “Chain of Notification” of possible favors received:

 

1. Your local Bishop is the first notification

2. Postulator, Association of the Friends of Fr. Caffarel, 49 rue de la Glaciere, F-75013, Paris, France 

 

We would love it if you could take time to look at our website, www.teamsofourlady.org and go to “Fr. Caffarel” and also “News and Events” and drop down to see the interactive information available on Fr. Caffarel. We feel like the more we share about who Fr. Caffarel is the more we have given one reason to be a part of the Association of the Friends of Fr. Caffarel. We believe strongly that every individual and couple is an “Information Couple” for the Friends of Fr. Caffarel, so our real task is the education of all of our members about our dear Founder.

 

Rob and Sharla Walsh

Correspondent Couple for the USA Super Region for the Friends of Fr. Caffarel