Frank Parater Servant of God, Seminarian
Part two of three
Rev. J. Scott Duarte ’78, JCD Postulator
F
rank Parater, North American College seminarian, Class of 1925, was recently declared a Servant of God. The process for his beatification has begun. Though he did not live long enough to be ordained a priest, his faith-filled life – and death – prompted those who knew him to declare him a true saint. The second article of this series recounts some of the experiences that influenced Frank Parater prior to his entering Belmont Abbey Seminary College and that prepared him for making a gift of himself to God through an act of oblation for the conversion of non-Catholics.
Above: Frank Parater’s parents, Francis Joseph, Sr., and Mary Raymond.
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Frank Parater was born on October 10, 1897, in Richmond, Virginia, ten days after the death of Saint Thérèse, the Little Flower, who would prove important in Frank's spiritual life. His father, Francis Joseph Parater, Sr., was a Catholic of Portuguese ancestry, and his mother, Mary Raymond, was a former Anglican communicant at St. John's Episcopal Church and a convert to Catholicism. That marriage was his father's second. His first wife was Elizabeth Miller who bore him five children, three of whom survived infancy and grew to adulthood. The eldest son of this first marriage, also named Francis, died in 1887 at the age of twenty-seven, just a few months before the birth of our Servant of God, who was again named Francis Joseph Parater, Jr. When Elizabeth was ill and learned she was going to die, it is said that she expressed the hope that her husband would remarry, and even suggested Mary Raymond as the person best suited to raise her children. Eleven children were born to this second marriage, but only three survived infancy, Marie, Grace, and Frank, who was the youngest. His sisters were of great importance to him, especially Marie who was his confidant and who later became
Pontifical North American College
MA GA Z I N E
instrumental in preserving his letters, journals and other documents and personal effects. Frank was named for his patron saint, Francis DeSales, founder of the Sisters of the Visitation whose monastery was just three blocks from
Top: Parater as a Boy Scout. Above: Parater as an altar boy.