Welcome to the Tiffin Franciscans. I am Sister Sara Aldridge, the Community Minister of the Sisters of St. Francis. We were founded in Tiffin, Ohio by Fr. Joseph Bihn, a parish priest and Elizabeth Schaefer, a widow, to respond to the needs of orphans and elderly who didn’t have anybody to care for them after the Civil War.

Our charism, our Franciscan values of concern for the poor, care of creation, contemplation action and peacemaking keep us responding to the needs of the times, shaping ourselves and shaping our ministries. Prayer is a part of each of our lives. Ministry flows out of centering our lives in God and on the Gospel, and then the ministry calls us back to prayer and discernment. I invite you to dig deeper into our charism as you survey our website and social media.

We Tiffin Franciscans invite you to join us in personally deepening these Gospel values and then sharing them with the world. In recent years, we have been focused on personal and communal transformation that is so urgently needed in our world. We invite you to partner with us in walking the way of St. Francis and St. Clare, spreading the joy of the Gospel.