Franciscan Father Jean-Claude Chupin, the co-founder of the Community of the Lamb, died on Easter Sunday, April 5, in Saint-Pierre, France, at the headquarters of the international congregation of priests and religious he helped found. He is known for living with the homeless and for his preaching.

Archbishop Emeritus Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, who is living his retirement with the Little Brothers of the Lamb in Kansas City, called Father Jean-Claude “a true spiritual father who challenged, affirmed and encouraged his children.”

While he remained a Franciscan, Father Jean-Claude was assigned to help lead the new congregation, and his ties to the new congregation were formalized in 1994. The religious congregation has opened houses in eight countries and is known for its sung liturgy, which combines aspects of Eastern and Western Catholic rites, and the simple architectural style of its religious houses, which are located in poor neighborhoods. Fans of the order include cardinals, popes, those the congregation has visited in prisons and those from whom they beg their food on door-to-door visits. His congregation remembers when Pope Francis called him in 2023 to tell him he had heard he was sick and was praying for him.

Living With the Poor

Father Jean-Claude was known for living with the homeless. (The community does not use surnames or the titles “Mother” and “Father,” using “little brother” and “little sister” for all members, but the title “Father” is used here for clarity.)

He had continually asked the Franciscans for permission to live on the streets with the homeless, and when he was 50, in 1982, permission was finally granted.

“He had a very clear purpose, but he didn’t have precise activities,” said Father Jean-Baptiste, a longtime member of the congregation ordained by St. John Paul II in 1984 who joined the priest for many of these missions. Father Jean-Claude lived among people in their hardship, and “rather than trying to say something to them, he listened,” his fellow Franciscan added.

During the 11 years he lived on the streets, from 1982 to 1993, Father Jean-Claude continued his duties to the Community of the Lamb via letters from places he was traveling in France, Belgium and Italy and by attending the congregation’s chapter meetings.

He returned to the streets in 2005 at age 73 and told a confrere, “How much I would love to die poor in the midst of the poor.”

Called by Francis, Discovering Dominic

He remembered feeling called to the Franciscans as an 11-year-old. He woke up crying in his bed in the living room of his family’s home in western France. He explained to his parents that St. Francis had called him to follow, and when he woke, he found a Franciscan scapular on his pillow.

“My parents comforted me, telling me it was an accident, that the scapular had fallen from the mantelpiece onto my bed. But that didn’t change a thing,” he said in an account of his life recorded by the Community of the Lamb in 2012. For him, it “was laden with the meaning that St. Francis had given me a sign of friendship and calling.”

This calling was later confirmed when he had another experience on a boat sailing by Brittany’s shoreline, according to material about the priest that the Little Sisters sent to the Register.

“I am a Franciscan,” he said, and so he entered the novitiate, professing his first vows a year later on the feast of St. Francis’ stigmata, Sept. 17, 1953. “The novitiate was, for the most part, a very happy time, even carefree,” he said. “St. Francis was a very sure guide for me.” The words of Father Jean-Claude, and the interviews with religious members of the congregation, were gathered for the Register by members of the Little Sisters of the Lamb during Holy Week, when five students of Benedictine College were on retreat with the community in France.

Two decades later, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, he met another spiritual guide: St. Dominic. Dominican sisters from Paris were stationed where he was living, in Vézelay, France, a pilgrimage spot on the road to Santiago de Compostela.

“The first encounters with the sisters put him in touch with a quest that was his own, but at the school of St. Dominic,” explained Father François-Dominique, prior of the Little Brothers of the Lamb. “Very quickly, little sister Marie found in him a father, a brother, a friend.”

One priest who knew Father Jean-Claude in the early days of the Community of the Lamb was a new Dominican priest from Austria, Father Christoph Schönborn, who would later be made the editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and rise to the level of cardinal.

“Throughout the 50 years I’ve known him, Brother Jean-Claude has always struck me as a model of firm gentleness and clarity in kindness,” Cardinal Schönborn told the Register, but nonetheless, “What I have always appreciated from the beginning is that, at least in the early years, Marie and Jean-Claude bickered a lot! That’s a good sign because those were arguments rooted in charity and in love for the Church.”

Shortly thereafter, Father Jean-Claude was sent by the Franciscan Order to lead the Community of the Lamb as a spiritual father and moved into the motherhouse. He also helped found the congregation in Argentina, where he was called Padrecito (“Little Father”), a name that stuck.

A Friend of Jesus

He died after a long illness at age 94. “He never strayed from the Gospel,” said Father François-Dominique, the prior of the Little Brothers of the Lamb. “He conveyed a way of being and a spirit — and he did so with complete warmth and cordiality.”

In his final years, he lived in the picturesque motherhouse of the Community of the Lamb, in Saint-Pierre, where he was a spiritual mentor to community members.

The head of America’s community, Little Sister Marie-Jeanne, said he would walk the countryside, and “pointing out some insect or bird, he could not contain his Franciscan soul that felt constant wonder at the beauty around him.”

She sent along the remembrances of community members who knew him.

“He always had the right words to put me back in a deep and solid intimacy with Christ,” a little sister shared.

“He was radiant with the light of his own friendship with Jesus and was filled with a great simplicity and interior balance. Jesus had become his own life,” said another.

A Little Brother of the Lamb said, “Upon entering and rooting myself in the community, his homilies breathed a great hope into my life. He never spoke to us from a higher place, but always as a brother.”

The funeral Mass for Father Jean-Claude will be held Thursday, April 9, during the Easter Octave at the Community of the Lamb in Saint-Pierre, France, and livestreamed here.

Father Jean-Claude saw the Mass as “the essential act of every day,” according to Father François-Dominique. His homilies were considered part of the formation of the members of the community, and they would try to write down every line.

“The heart of his life was to give us an explanation of the Gospel from the first verse to the last verse,” said one of the sisters.

That life is visible in his legacy within the community in France and in the United States.

“We were in Saint-Pierre yesterday,” Lucie Bonzom, 18, who lives near the Little Sisters motherhouse, told the Register. “It was really amazing to see the joy of the community in this moment.”

In the United States, the Community of the Lamb has homes in the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri.

“Father Jean-Claude was an amazing priest,” Archbishop Naumann said. “His preaching and wise counsel were both profound and simple. It was profound in that it had a depth that captured the heart and fullness of the Gospel of Jesus.”