1.     UNIVERSAL BROTHER-SISTERHOOD:

Form the beginning Francis was aware that he was founding an order that was wholly different from all the previous monastic orders. His call was specifically to replicate ‘a life lived according to the pattern of the gospel’ and his gospel life was expressly a witness to ‘fraternitas’ or brotherhood, which was its basic focus. To Francis fraternity meant being ‘members of one household’ and a brotherhood of evangelical witness that was accomplished first within the fraternity itself, and then extended to others and even to the entire creation. It was truly a ‘universal brother-sisterhood’. Keeping the model of Christ and the apostles before him, Francis greatly desired to form his brotherhood for mutual service by the simple acceptance and plain co-penetration of each and every member in the everyday life of the fraternity. Such a fraternity of brothers therefore could admit differences but never any of the inequalities, on account of either their origin or their intellectual capacity, either the office fulfilled in the internal structure of the order or even the ordination to sacred orders. The ordained brothers were in truth specifically understood as ‘the ministers and servants’ of all the brothers, in the strict gospel sense of the words.

              It is precisely this type of fraternity that the first capuchins tried to re-establish from within. Verily theirs was a brotherhood of voluntary poor men, free and happy, fraternal zing and loving, open and simple. The simplicity was all the more visible in as much as there was a total leveling of the brothers, according to the pattern of love and faith. Famous theologians, renowned preachers, persons of high nobility, all lived in brotherly equality within the fraternities, no seldom governed by a simple brother. In order to guarantee at all times this atmosphere of  fraternal intimacy and evangelical vibration, the constitutions laid it down that numerically the fraternities be neither too big and crowded nor too small and be individualistic, becoming thereby less vital. The first chronicles of the order do indeed give us a beautiful and picturesque account of this simple fraternal life of the capuchins, almost worthy of the times of st. Francis himself. It is therefore importance to bear in mind that ‘fraternal life is always and everywhere to be basic requirement of the formation process’ and for the individual fraternities to be capable of carrying out the task of formation, they should draw inspiration and encouragement from the primary fraternity, that is provincial fraternity.