The Agape Community is a lay Catholic residential community with non-profit status, co-founded in 1982 in Brockton, MA by Suzanne Belote Shanley, Brayton Shanley and Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, with a vision of ministry in peace education with a primary focus on Catholic schools from elementary through colleges and universities, and including an ecumenical and interfaith embrace. The community began with a focus on prayer (three times a day), evangelical simplicity and peacemaking witness in the world.