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FRANCIS MARION MESSER (Frank, 19) is the youngest of PAULINE O’NEIL (42, hair in bun, girly) and JUSTIN FREDERICK MESSER (Fred, 46, macho), a police officer.

Frank has three voluptuous unmarried sisters who wear miniskirts all the time: CYNTHIA ROBERTA (23), SYLVIA LOUISA (22), and MARIA THERESA (21).  Pauline’s sister, KATHERINE PATRICIA O’NEIL (45, hair in bun, cat-eye glasses on a chain around her neck), lives with the family and serves as a co-mother.

Frank grew up in a large city in the South in a house dominated by the five women.  His workaholic cop dad was on the job around the clock and for the most part was not there for the family.  The overly protective Pauline shielded Frank from excessive physical exertion.  Aunt Katherine spent hours helping him with homework, always beginning each study session with a prayer to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Divine Doctor.  Young Frank would rummage through his sister's things and ask them to dress him up.  The sisters eagerly treated him as a "living doll" outfitting him in frilly girl's clothing, putting makeup on him, and making him play house.  In a pretend wedding the girls once staged, Frank played the role of the flower girl.

When Frank was in the fifth grade, Aunt Katherine made a pilgrimage to Rome and brought him back a large clear crystal rosary that had been blessed by the newly elected Pope John XXIII.  Frank loved to take the crystal rosary to his bedroom window overlooking the convent garden of St. Judith Parish and let sunbeams refract into dancing sparkles on the wall.  Living next door to St. Judith Parochial School, every day Frank came home for a hot lunch prepared by his mother.  Then, always precisely at noon, just as the bells of the midday Angelus were ringing, Frank would be standing in his bedroom window, dangling the large clear crystal rosary in the sunlight.

Frank was a born naturalist and became fascinated with the butterflies that flicked and flittered through the nuns’ flower garden.  Once, when watering the flowers at the request of Sr. Mary Dymphna, Mother Superior at St. Judith’s, a Giant Swallowtail alit on his bright yellow shirt.  For his birthday that year, all he asked for was a butterfly-collection kit: a fine-mesh butterfly net, a glass jar and a vial of ether, a cork display board and special stickpins, and a beautifully illustrated fieldbook of butterflies.  Frank’s interest in butterflies grew to the point that he convinced his mother and his Aunt Katherine to help him plant a butterfly garden in their yard.

In the seventh grade Frank realized that he did not share his friends' curiosity about the budding breasts of the girls in class, try though he might.  His best friend was Carlos Vargas, a Cuban boy whose family fled Havana after Castro.  Frank and Carlos would stay for hours in Carlos's room, sitting side by side on the bed, talking and laughing, often each boy’s arm around the shoulder of the other.  Frank first kissed Carlos that year and realized that he might be a homosexual.

Frank confided his suspicions about himself to the assistant pastor, Fr. Guy Fleischmann, only two years out of the seminary.  The young priest counseled Frank to resist all temptations of the flesh, lectured him on the gravity homosexual acts, and urged him to pray the rosary every day for the courage to ward off all carnal thoughts, especially fantasies about sodomy and fellatio.  Fr. Fleischmann also gave Frank a white chastity belt, suggesting that the consecrated cincture would serve as a constant reminder of the glory of sacred celibacy.  And of the guaranteed consequences of sinful incontinence: being cast forever into the unyielding clutches of Satan’s howling demons in the unquenchable fires of hell.

It was Fr. Fleischman who began to talk with Frank about the virtues and joys of a priestly vocation.  As a dedicated and devout altar boy, Frank had from an early age admired the priests at St. Judith’s and the work they did ministering to parishioners.  When he was play-acting with his sisters, Frank would often dress himself in make-believe vestments and pretend to say Mass, relishing the raising of a coffee cup as he pronounced the words, “This is my blood.”

The summer after seventh grade, he broached the topic of his vocation to his dad after Mass one Sunday.  Fred, hurrying off to work, instructed Frank, “Well, talk to your mother and Aunt Katherine about it.”  Pauline was so overjoyed at the prospect of having a son-priest that she began a one-year special novena of thanks to the Blessed Virgin.

Aunt Katherine contacted Fr. Thaddeus, the rector at St. Mark Seminary, and arranged for Frank to spend an orientation weekend there.  After two days observing the life of a seminarian, listening to the Barnabian monks chant Vespers, and talking with Msgr. John Purvis Denton, the archdiocesan Director of Vocations, Frank resolved that his whole purpose in life was to be ordained a priest.  Eager to start his priestly studies, Frank asked for permission to enter St. Mark’s for the eighth grade.

But St. Mark’s had no eighth grade class, and Frank had to content himself to wait until he had graduated from elementary school.  But, he nevertheless resolved to get underway with his preparation, purchasing a Psalter from a Catholic bookstore and chanting the Divine Office of Vespers every evening before supper.  Frank attended Mass daily, went to Confession every week, and never missed a Holy Day of Obligation.  He also bought a Latin Study Guide, subscribed to L’Osservatore Romano, and began to sketch out the design for his Chalice.

Frank has small brown eyes and sandy hair, is short, stocky, and slightly overweight, and has a small scar above his right eye.  A fastidious busybody, Frank is the king of the grapevine.  He is bright and compassionate, knows he’s homosexual, and believes celibacy will be his salvation from sins of the flesh.  Frank never takes off his white chastity belt, prays the rosary every day, and desperately wants to become a priest.  He is an avid butterfly collector, makes rosaries as a hobby, and loves the theater.