Sacred Heart Brother Ron Travers learning names, faces

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

Brother of the Sacred Heart Ron Travers, the newly appointed vicar for religious in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, was born and reared in California and has accomplished most of his religious ministry on the opposite coast as a teacher and administrator in the brothers’ schools in New York and New Jersey.

But Brother Ron says there is something endearing and inspirational about the hospitality and fraternity of people of south Louisiana, nowhere more evident than in the service of Mount Carmel Sister Beth Fitzpatrick, the person he is succeeding in his new role as liaison between Archbishop Gregory Aymond and the 277 religious sisters and 56 brothers who live in the archdiocese.

“She has a big, warm, caring heart,” Brother Ron said of Sister Beth, who served for nine years as vicar for religious. “In the letter I sent out to all the religious, I indicated my thanks to her, and I know I have big shoes to fill. She loved what she was doing, and she was well loved and respected. She really liked to engage with the religious of the archdiocese, and I want to keep that up.”

Meet and greet
Brother Ron has spent his first few weeks setting up appointments to meet with religious communities at their residences. He visited the Poor Clare Sisters on Aug. 11, the feast of St. Clare, and he wants to make the rounds of the 52 religious communities who currently serve in the archdiocese. About 31 of those communities are religious women.

With the idea of honoring the history of each religious community, he has compiled a list of the years in which each community first established residence in the archdiocese, dating back, of course, to the Ursuline Sisters in 1727.

“If a community has been here for a hundred years, that’s a milestone and we want to celebrate that, and Archbishop Aymond is all for it,” Brother Ron said.

When he served in the Diocese of Brooklyn as an assistant in the office of religious, Brother Ron found it helpful to develop a council composed of women and men religious to discuss any new initiatives that might be helpful.

“It’s not a deliberative body, but kind of an advisory body that can raise any concerns or ideas that the religious have to put forward to the archbishop,” Brother Ron said.

Brother Ron entered the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in 1996 and made his first profession in 2005. He was a member of the Brothers’ New York province and actually did his formation as a novice in New Orleans in 1998 and 1999 before moving back to the northeast.

South Louisiana ties
He spent 20-plus years as a teacher, assistant principal and principal at two elementary schools and one high school operated by the Sacred Heart Brothers before going to Vandebilt Catholic High School in Houma in 2018.

David Boudreaux, president of Vandebilt Catholic at the time, wanted to bring back the presence of the Sacred Heart Brothers. Brother Ron taught religion, English, psychology and theater and was on staff with another brother, while two other brothers joined the staff of E.D. White Catholic High School in Thibodaux.

“I went down for the interview, and it was Southern hospitality at its finest,” Brother Ron said. “They wined and dined. It was wonderful. I liked the school even before I got through the door. I was there for four years, and it was really tough to leave (when the brothers made the decision to leave the two schools).”

Now that he is back in Louisiana, Brother Ron is taking Sister Beth’s advice to visit as many religious as possible.

“I think it’s a very good thing for me to meet and greet all of them to learn their names and faces, because they need to get to know me, too,” Brother Ron said.

The sheer number of women and men religious is shrinking and communities are aging, but Brother Ron said his prayer is “that we will still have a viable presence in the archdiocese.”

“As much as we can do to be available – even just our presence – means something,” Brother Ron said. “Our way of life – religious life – is a viable way of living, and we have to do what we can for it.”

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