Among the new decrees approved by the Pope was also that of an American Capuchin friar who in New York and Detroit was doing good to thousands of people from the humble place of the convent.
A capuchin friar so reluctant to theology to urge his superiors to stop him from preaching. Yet he was capable of responding to those who knocked on the door of the New York convent and show God’s mercy in its fullness. Along with the great figures of Cardinal Van Thuân and Dalla Costa, stands the humble American friar Solano Casey among the new decrees of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved yesterday by the Pope. Francis has authorized for the Capuchin religious the promulgation of the miracle decree, which opens the way for the beatification.
Born in 1870 in an Irish family from Wisconsin, young Barney had done several jobs including being a workmanship and tramway driver when, at age of 21 he entered the Milwaukee’s diocesan seminary. However, his path to the priesthood did not turn out to be that simple. None of his superiors questioned his piety, but Latin and theological studies were not his thing. Reason why, the diocesan seminary did not consider him suitable for priesthood.
Hence, the choice to enter Detroit in the Capuchin friars a year later and in 1897 he took the name of Fr. Francis Solano, after the great evangelizer from Peru who loved the poor and gathered them to Prayer with the violin, the same instrument that young Casey loved to play. Despite the fact that even the Capuchins had doubts over his admission to priesthood, in 1904, Francis Solano was finally ordained, yet just as a “simple priest”, to whom not to entrust the tasks of preaching and confessing.
Father Solane, who had always replied to all objections by putting his life in God’s hands, did not take it as a downgrading, but as an invitation to cultivate holiness through humility. And he did it in Harlem, the New York border district, to which he was assigned. He remained there for twenty years doing the simplest tasks of a doorman. However, answering to all those who rang the bell of the institution became the ministry of his life. At the door, he would meet people of every age and condition; women and men who often carried hardships and sufferings, asking for advice and prayers. Everyone knew that Father Casey would have welcomed everyone at any time of day or night.
After twenty years in New York, between Harlem and Yonkers, he was transferred to Detroit, in the Convent of St. Bonaventure, where he continued to carry out the ministry of concierge. Many people in New York and Detroit often visited him to thank him for a given advice or for a prayer that had been answered. Thus, on the advice of his Provincial Father, he began to record on a booklet those little or great graces received by the people he met. During his life, Solano filled seven of those booklets with more than six thousand entries. Blessings that he always attributed to God’s mercy only, asking in return only to love and help the Church missions.
He died on July 31, 1957 after a short illness. Sixty years later, the hunger for holiness of this simple friar remains lively in the United States.
