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friar

Member of a mendicant male religious order in the Roman Catholic Church

Also known as Frater · mendicant friar · Frate · Roman Catholic friar · Brother · mendicant

Instance of: Catholic vocation
Subclass of: member of Roman Catholic religious orders and societies
Part of: mendicant order

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders in the Catholic Church. There are also friars outside of the Catholic Church, such as within the Evangelical-Lutheran Churches and Anglican Communion. The term, first used in the 12th or 13th century, distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the older monastic orders' allegiance to a single monastery formalized by their vow of stability. A friar may be in holy orders or be a non-ordained brother. The most significant orders of friars are the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Carmelites.

Overview

All data

42 statements · 14% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Different from: brother
Catholic monk
regular cleric
canon regular
Male form of label: راهب
frade
frade
brat
frate
fraile
brat
Said to be the same as: religious brother
Honorific prefix: Friar
Brother
Wears: religious habit

On other databases

23 identifiers linking friar across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

14%

externally sourced

Source last edited September 20, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). friar (Q548320). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/friar-Q548320