'We do our very best to live as simply as possible': Brother Richard Hendrick on fame, poverty and the digital age

Brother Richard Hendrick talks fame, poverty, ego and the digital age with Ellie O'Byrne

Br Richard Hendrick at the Franciscan Priory on Church Street, Dublin: 'We do our very best to live as simply as possible: the maxim is the least necessary, not the maximum allowed.' Pictures: Moya Nolan

He may have won the hearts and minds of the nation with his recent Tommy Tiernan Show appearance, but Capuchin Franciscan friar Brother Richard Hendrick is taking his new-found fame with measured humility.

“As far as I’m aware, people seemed happy that the conversation had taken place,” he says. 

“We don’t engage a lot in checking on things like that. We simply go, and do, and hopefully leave a bit of a blessing of peace behind us, and return to our work and our way of life.” 

Br Hendrick says he thinks the conversation with Tiernan, which covered everything from the existence of the soul to his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, struck a chord in part because of a certain hunger for simplicity and meaning the conditions of modern life are inducing.

“As one philosopher said, there’s a God-shaped hole at the heart of humanity,” he says. 

“We either come to faith, or we place something else there. So it doesn’t surprise me to hear there was that kind of reaction, because we have excluded faith from modern public discourse in many ways.” 

I think what people are seeing is not about me as a person, it's about the richness of the tradition I represent. It can speak to people and in all times and places and of all creeds and none, because it’s essentially about the idea that the mystery of all existence is a mystery of love. 

Despite his medieval appearance — his order still dresses in the simple brown habit of their founder, the 12th-century Italian mystic St Francis of Assisi — Br Richard is very familiar with the thoroughly modern form of public discourse that is social media: he has had a Facebook account where he posts inspirational Christian teachings for over 10 years, and a Blogspot site where he publishes his poetry and spiritual musings.

A poem he wrote in the early days of the first covid lockdown of 2020 went viral and he ended up reading it on BBC Radio London and clocking up more than 39,000 views on YouTube.

Digital world a useful tool

Having served as provincial director of youth ministry for the Capuchins in Ireland, Br Richard sees the digital world as a useful tool to bring “a little glimpse of hope and light, in a non-judgmental way” into the lives of people who may otherwise not be reached. 

But he is also aware of the pitfalls of the realm of likes and shares.

“We can start being ruled by the audience, and once that happens, then the ego gets involved,” he says. 

“I’m fortunate to live a kind of life that is about the opposite: not exactly egoless, but about a kind of transformation of the ego in the service of love. So in that digital world, it’s very good to be able to do what’s necessary there, and then to remove oneself from it again.” 

Br Richard is one of around 60 friars currently in the Irish Capuchin Franciscan Province. They move between three communities in Dublin, Ards Friary in Co Donegal, where they tend to 160 acres of forest and shoreline as an ecology project and retreat centre, a friary in Kilkenny, and one in Cork. Overseas, the Irish friars work in missions in Zambia, South Africa, and South Korea.

St Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of ecology and the environment, and the Franciscans minister to those in poverty and need, as well as caring for animals and nature.

Homeless centre

On Dublin’s Church Street, where Br Richard works, a daycare centre for the homeless feeds almost 1,000 people a day between breakfast and dinner sittings, provides counselling services, and partners with the HSE to provide specialist clinics in dentistry, chiropody, and ophthalmology.

Having grown up in Dundrum in a family he describes as “religious, but in an ordinary way”, Br Richard first felt himself called to the monastic life when he read a book about St Francis in his teens. He completed 10 years of training with the Capuchin Franciscans at the age of just 28.

“My parents’ attitude to the whole thing was, ‘if this is what you want and what is making you happy, we will support you, but the moment it does not make you happy and you want to do something else we will support you in that too',” he says. 

“It was a very healthy atmosphere to grow up in.” 

Vow of poverty

Now 50, Br Richard has lived with no possessions at all for about half of his life: the Franciscan vow of poverty means that he owns nothing, not even the clothes he wears.

Br Richard Hendrick: 'We have a saying in the order, which is that you’re not fully a monk until you have mourned the children you will never have.'

“Everything I use, that I wear, the mobile phone I am speaking to you on, all belong to the community and are given to me for the work that I do,” he says.

 “We do our very best to live as simply as possible: the maxim is the least necessary, not the maximum allowed.

People tell us all the time that they long for a simpler life. A simple Franciscan question that anyone can ask themselves is: am I living from need, or am I living from want? They are two very different ways of living. 

"When we live from need, we tend to be able to have more to share, even if it’s only time to give to people, which is the most precious resource.

“If we live from want, we never really fill that hole, unfortunately. We’re always on to the next thing, the next event, the next relationship. When we live from need, we discover we actually need very little.” 

Vow of chastity

His vow of chastity is what most people will ask about first, he says. And while that public fascination may be about abstaining from sex, the forgoing of family and fatherhood are equally important.

“We have a saying in the order, which is that you’re not fully a monk until you have mourned the children you will never have,” he says. 

“We see it as something beautiful, wonderful, and powerful: we are not giving up something negative, we are taking something valuable and giving it as a gift. In handing that over, naturally as a human being there are stages in your life when you say, ‘what would it have been like?’ But I am absolutely happy that I am where I am.” 

Br Richard, in keeping with the teachings of his order, is non-judgmental about the spirituality of others and believes messages of joy and unconditional love exist for everyone, in all walks of life.

“The best advice is twofold: have some point or place of silence in your life, to become comfortable being silent with yourself,” he says. 

“The second is to be in touch with the natural world as much as you possibly can, to really enjoy the beauty in the world around us, at the moment especially. 

“If you can do those things, I think we find ultimate meaning, transcendent meaning, the thing that we in our tradition call God, moves through those spaces in a very powerful way.”