Joseph James Nangle

Br. Joseph Nangle, OFM, 92, passed away Dec. 14, 2024, in Washington, D.C. He was a professed Franciscan friar for 72 years and a priest for 66 years. A staunch advocate for justice and peace, he had a deep love and respect for people living on the margins of society.

Br. Joe was born on July 20, 1932, in Lexington, Massachusetts, to Joseph and Mary (née Mahoney) Nangle. He attended St. Agnes Grammar School in Arlington, Massachusetts, St. Mary’s High School in Waltham, Massachusetts, and graduated from St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, New York, before he was received into the Order of Friars Minor on Aug. 11, 1951.

He professed his first vows as a Franciscan one year later at St. Bonaventure Friary in Paterson, New Jersey, and was solemnly professed on Aug. 16, 1955, at Christ the King Seminary in Allegany, New York. After completing theological studies, he was ordained on April 25, 1958, at the Franciscan Monastery, Mount St. Sepulchre in Washington, D.C.

Br. Joe spent 15 years as a missionary – first in Bolivia, where he worked in three villages and their outlying areas in the Bolivian Andean Region, and then Peru, where he founded Parroquia Santísimo Nombre de Jesús in Lima, the first ministry of Holy Name Province’s Peruvian mission. His experience ministering with the indigenous communities, and witnessing the Latin American Church transformed by the meeting in Medellin, Colombia, the influence of Gustavo Gutiérrez, OP, and liberation theology, profoundly affected his spirituality and vocation.

When he returned to the United States in 1975, he sought to address the root causes of the injustices he witnessed in Bolivia and Peru. He served for three years as a staff and board member with the U.S. Catholic Mission Association before working as chief of staff for the International Office for Social Justice and World Peace, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, from 1977 to 1980.

He returned to Massachusetts briefly, co-founding the breadline at St. Anthony Shrine in Boston, before returning to Washington, D.C., where he served as director of the Office of Justice and Peace of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men from 1982 to 1990, and co-founded the Assisi Community, an intentional community of lay and religious women and men in inner-city, Washington, D.C., dedicated to a simple lifestyle and social change.

Br. Joe then served from 1990 to 1994 as outreach director for Sojourners’ Magazine before working as co-director of Franciscan Mission Service from 1994 to 2005. In 2006, he began an 18-year stint serving the Hispanic community at Our Lady Queen of Peace in Arlington, Virginia, while also working as treasurer of Franciscan Action Network in Washington, D.C., from 2006 to 2013. He was elected to the Provincial Council of the legacy Holy Name Province twice, serving from 2011 to 2017, and briefly served as director of post-novitiate formation from 2013 to 2014.

A longtime member of Pax Christi, he was a member of the national council in the 1990s that made the decision to make Pax Christi USA a more deliberate anti-racist, multicultural Catholic peace and justice movement. He frequently wrote for Pax Christi and Sojourners and authored several books including “Engaged Spirituality: Faith Life in the Heart of the Empire” and “Birth of a Church,” a memoir of his time in Latin America. Last year, Pax Christi USA named him their 2023 Teacher of Peace.