We met our friend Carl Grigg at a talk on Padre Pio given in London by Stella Lilley, the head of the Padre Pio prayer groups in England. We struck up an immediate friendship and remained close friends till he died a few years ago.
Carl had once been a mercenary soldier and was fighting in a war in the Belgian Congo when he witnessed a horrific rape of a nun. He was so enraged that he shot the perpetrator at point blank range. This, he told us, was the beginning of his conversion. The incident, and his violent response to it, shook him. He realized suddenly that his action was no better than the action of the rapist but now he had dispatched him to his maker without any chance of repentance.
This incident was eventually to lead him out of the military unit and search for redemption. He went into teaching and went deeper into his faith, eventually seeing that the way St. Francis of Assisi dealt with the problem of violence, was what he was looking for. St. Francis too had been a soldier and had recoiled from the violence in much the same way. Carl eventually became a member of the Third Order of Franciscans, a section of the original order of Friars Minor that St. Francis had established. This Order was established by St. Francis to allow lay people, married or unmarried, to follow the Franciscan Rule without being part of a monastery. It encourages its members to live according to the Gospels and connects them with the worldwide Franciscan family in a meaningful way.
In 1976, both Ursula and I were received into the Order to start our one-year novitiate. One year later, on the 4th of July 1977, at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Horseferry Road, London, we made our ‘Final Profession’. I took the name Brother Simon and Ursula took the name Sister Grace.

Our son, Francis, was then just under two years old and I held him in my arms, keeping hold of a large white candle with the other. I was dressed in the full Franciscan habit and Francis seemed to think this was all great fun. Although he was making several attempts to take hold of the candle, I managed to keep everything in order.
Ursula was not in a position to help out since she was five months pregnant with our second son, Thomas. So, there we were, pregnant woman and monk with a toddler, being professed as Franciscans. Must have looked odd to people who did not know about the Lay Franciscan Order!