Seventy years ago, on the 19th September 1948, in the novitiate house of the Friars Minor in Chilworth, Surrey, the nineteen year old Hans Krüger, along with four others made his first profession of vows and received the religious name Boniface, in honour of the English Saxon saint who in the eight century evangelised the Germans peoples.

Among his fellow novices professed that day are the names of those familiar to the generations of Friars since those post-War days: Campion McCool OFM and Lucian Hunt OFM (both ex-servicemen) and Reginald Clancy OFM. All have since died and, in fact, it was Fr Boniface who in 2013 gave the Last Anointing to Fr Reginald in the Craigmillar Friary, Edinburgh, at which they were both resident at the time.

Boniface’s years in Franciscan fraternal life have been spent in a myriad of activities – teaching, school chaplaincy, parish work, formation of the Friars, and service at the Franciscan headquarters in Rome: the OFM Curia. He is now resident in the Woodford community, Essex, where this September he celebrated his Platinum Jubilee of Religious Profession in the company of his Franciscan brothers and parishioners.

November 2018