Frederick Francis "Fred" McCarthy, O.F.S., (5 September 1918 – 26 October 2009)[1] was an American Franciscan cartoonist, creator of the popular Brother Juniper single-panel comic strip.
McCarthy grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and drew cartoons from an early age, some of which he submitted (without success) to the New Yorker.
McCarthy later served as art director of Friar, a national Franciscan magazine, and this led to the Brother Juniper character coming to the attention of the Publishers Syndicate, a distributor of comic strips.
[5] McCarthy also created two less-successful religious-themed strips, Sister Suzie about a teaching nun, and Brother Rufus.
[6] McCarthy, a Secular Franciscan from 1938, was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1945 but left the friars and the priesthood in the early 1960s.