A memorial service for Friar Leo Marie Joseph O.S.F. (Leo Joseph Brown) will be held Wednesday Feb. 11, at 11 a.m. in St. John’s Episcopal Church, located at 1190 N. Forbes Street, Lakeport. Fr. Leo died on Jan. 23 after a battle with cancer.
In 1985 Fr. Leo arranged the purchase of property in Kelseyville, CA that would become Little Portion Hermitage. At the end of 1989 he and two lay brothers were able to relocate to the property, where Fr. Leo designed and built the Oratory of Saint Georges on on the property.
Fr. Leo made his first formal contact with St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lakeport, CA in June 1990. This led to his being received into The Episcopal Church, as a life professed religious in 1995 and then as a priest in 1997, by The Rt. Rev. Jerry A. Lamb, bishop of the Diocese of Northern California. After serving as an associate priest at St. John’s, serving in Ukiah, Fort Bragg and Eureka and traveling on a mission to Trinidad, Fr. Leo returned to his beloved Hermitage in September 2008 and resumed serving St. John’s until he was officially appointed as Priest in Charge, in November 2009, by The Rt. Rev. Barry Beisner, bishop of the Diocese of Northern California. A year later he was unfortunately diagnosed with neuro-endocrine cancer, but continued to minister at his beloved St. John’s until his retirement on October 26, 2014.
Fr. Leo nurtured his love of art, architecture, history and good food by his extensive travels in Europe where he sustained many close friendships. He maintained close ties with the Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands and made two pilgrimages to Assisi, the city of St. Francis, and to Plock, Poland, the location of the original Mariavite monastery.
In his last months Fr. Leo was lovingly cared for by the team of Hospice of Lake County and many dear friends, especially his assistant, Roland Simpson and Mischa Workman.
His was an interesting life and career. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on 21 May 1947, the second son of Joseph Francis Brown and Marie Agnes Theisen. He grew up in Floral Park, on the edge of New York City. After High School he worked in the City for the church supply firm J. M. Hall and then C.M. Almy as an ecclesiastical designer.
Following the death of his mother in December 1970, he entered a Mariavite Old Catholic Franciscan religious order in New York City and received the Franciscan habit in December of 1972 and was henceforth known by his name in religion, Leo Marie Joseph.
After studying for the priesthood within the facilities of the order in New York and Montreal, Canada, Fr. Leo was ordained priest in Montreal by The Most Reverend Thomas J. Fehervary, the Mariavite Old Catholic bishop of Budapest, living in exile in Montreal. While continuing his design work, Fr. Leo served as a priest at The Church of the Beloved Disciple, the parish of the order in New York City, and was very active in the beginning Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement.
In 1979 he relocated to San Francisco,CA, and after several months on a teaching project in Nigeria, Fr. Leo began working with elderly shut-ins under the auspices of a Syro-Chaldean monastic community. At this time he studied the theological and liturgical traditions of that branch of Christianity. As the AIDS epidemic emerged in the early 1980’ he began ministering to the dying and their families in San Francisco.
Reception to follow in the Parish Hall and Committal of the Ashes afterwards at Little Portion Hermitage in Kelseyville. It is requested that donations in Fr. Leo’s memory be made to St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lakeport.
