Page 10 - C.A.L.L. #33 - Winter 2010/2011

Here we publish a letter and photos we received from a reader from

Franziskusgemeinschaft, a small religious community in rural Austria.

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14 August, 2010

Dear Anton, Dear Joel,

After reading C.A.L.L. No. 32, I thought I might write to answer the question: how
are communities doing when their members get older and no new younger ones join?
The Franziskusgemeinschaft was founded in 1981 – at that time 7 grown-ups and 8

children. The community has grown to 16 members (4 married couples, 8 singles) and
3 children. Living with us is one older relative who is 90 and needs 24/7 care and one

“homeless” person who has been with us already 6 years! We have many, many guests,
often up to 3 months at a time. At the moment we have a 43 year old Congolese living
with us for 5 months.

The members have gotten
older. Our founder, Fritz

Giglinger, is 75 and our
youngest member is 44.

The years have taken their
toll – but we still manage
our farm, our daily life,

the seminars, the
handcrafts etc quite well –

our many guests are a
great help, but we have to
Our community house - we built it ourselves
plan changes: from two
cows to one, less sheep,
less bees etc. However we enjoy the fact that although we haven’t grown into a larger

movement, we have left our footprint very definitely in the Austrian countryside.

We live in community of goods, all work in the community, we have a good daily

structure and “fear not the future!” So far we have cared for and buried 2 members,
we don’t really know how things will develop when, in 10 years, we are all that much

older, but we trust in God and each other that things will work out.

New members are hard to come by – people tend to love it here, are delighted that

we live this way but in the end don’t want to give up their private income or their

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