The Diocese of Allentown Most Rev. John O. Barres, D.D, S.T.D., J.C.L. 4029 W. Tilghman St. P.O. Box F Allentown, PA 18105-1538 William Watts Jr FMJC Good Shepherd Home 601 St John St Allentown Pa 18103

Dear Bishop Barres,

Welcome to the Diocese of Allentown! I am grateful that our Lord chose you to be our new Bishop, successor to the apostles. Be assured of my prayers for you and your ministry. My name is Bill Watts Jr FMJC and I belong to St. Paul Parish in Allentown. When I first heard about your coming to this Diocese to become our Bishop I followed with interest by the internet, newspaper and other ways. I believe we were blessed by our Holy Father’s wise appointment. At the time I was reading the book “Rise, Let us be on our Way” by our beloved late John Paul II the Great. When I heard that you were the son of a father and no less a mother of convert ministers something leaped up inside my heart. I am reading a copy of your Father, Oliver Barres’, book “One Shepherd One Flock.” In the passage in his diary August 28, 1954 “Come Home.” He was asking himself right before at what cost do I come Home to the Church which his Lord and our Lord founded. The Cross he carried with Jesus was heavy at times like the heaviness I carry with our dear Lord of muscular dystrophy and the effect of this tired some disease, but will lead us to the most glorious Home of all. I would have liked to have seen his face when his dear son became bishop of that One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that only Christ could have founded considering His promise and His nature. The book is inspiring to this 41 year old cradle Catholic.

I live at Good Shepherd Home for persons with disabilities in south Allentown and have lived here for a better part of twelve years. It started over a hundred years ago by a Lutheran minister John Raker who started by taking in disabled orphan children. It grew from there into a vibrant home for disabled adults. A few years ago a friend Leslie Lang asked me if I would help her become Catholic. Without going into too much detail we watched Fr. John Corapi’s Catechism of the on EWTN. She came into full communion with the Church when confirmed at the Easter Vigil. We have a catechism group once a month where we go into the truths of the Faith.

Why do I do this? In 1995 I was received into and on August 22, 2004 I was perpetually professed as a Franciscan Missionary of Jesus Crucified. We are canonically a public Association of the Lay Faithful, men and women totally consecrated to God in poverty, chastity and obedience. There are about nineteen women and four men, the men are presently working toward independence as Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany and the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life has counseled us to do when the time is right for us to do so. I was recently reluctantly, on my part, elected to be general minister of the Men in June as Clarence Nicholas passed away leaving a vacancy. The community will at some point as God directs us receive Secular Institute status as we live this life already. The men who have two temporary professed and two perpetually professed members will hopefully begin the process of receiving Association of the Lay Faithful status in a few years. We were founded by Bishop Hubbard of Albany, New York, a woman Louise Principe of Albany and Father Reginald Reddy OFM also of Albany with a unique charism of the Holy Spirit for and with persons with disabilities, providing a need in the Church (see Bishops pastoral statement on persons with disabilities in 1978). We were founded to give persons with mental and physical disabilities who are called by Jesus Crucified an opportunity to totally consecrate themselves to Him by means of following after Him in poverty, chastity and obedience with the apostolate of service to prayer, and empowering persons with disabilities to accept the “salvific” meaning of their suffering in union with Christ (see Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris). This Apostolate also empowers persons with disabilities who have dignity in a world that denies it to take their rightful place in the Life and Mission of the Church and in society. Justice demands this? Lastly, we assist the Church and society to remove the attitudinal and physical barriers to full inclusion. This will transform the world from within.

The reason for this letter is to encourage you and ask you firstly to pray for us and then to consider what we men could do to start the process toward status as an Association of the Faithful for God’s greatest glory and the good of the Church. Please pray for me in my ministry and for our little group here in Allentown. Give my regards to your Mother and Father.

Sincerely Yours in Christ,

William Watts Jr FMJC.