Saint Augustine’s Seminary, in its construction period. The Recollects arrived to Fortaleza at the beginning of a new century and without previous knowledge.

The Saint Monica’s Home of the Augustinian Recollects in Fortaleza (Ceará, Brazil) is a project that fights against exploitation, abuse, abandonment, school drop-out or any type of violence against underage girls and adolescents from neighborhoods, families and more vulnerable.

Ceara Cove is a large extension in the north of Fortaleza, now on the municipal frontier, with a very depressed economy: deficient social services, unemployment, disintegrated families and few educational and health services. This description may be no different from that of many districts on the outskirts of the large cities. But there is something which immediately calls the attention. Motels are one of the habitual businesses, up to the point of where it is difficult to find a street without one. They are not simple establishments of lodging, but rather rent rooms by the hour and without asking questions. This special scene betrays another in which the whole city participates: to be one of the preferred destinations of “sexual tourism”. Many young girls are exploited by the tourists in exchange for small economic or material contributions, fooled by their own desires to improve life, or in other occasions pushed by their own families.

The Augustinian Recollects arrived in Fortaleza in the year 2000, in order to work in two areas: the Seminary of Saint Augustine which forms new religious; and pastoral responsibility, established by six self-maintained communities with independent bases from the Barra. Nevertheless, religious, seminarians and lay people cannot stay on the margins of reality. Therefore, they decided to attend to the populations who socially, psychologically and in their families suffered most. The Young girls in Ceara Cove are in continuous risk of suffering great injury from their earliest years, injuries which pass from the body to the soul and which create self-destructive personalities. Once they enter into the spiral of money for the use and abuse of their bodies, they lose reference to the future and the value of self-esteem. Their will is reduced to small limits, they suffer from a lack of self-respect and they fail to consider education and study as sources of growth and well-being.

Various organizations attended to the minors in the Barra. Among them, three Spanish religious organizations: Missionaries of the Mother of Life and the Visitation, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Camilian Sisters. They all worked from three respective centers: the communal living Center to be reborn in Hope, the Little Citizen Project and the Association of Mary Mother of Life. There were also other proposals expressed by lay people, like the Lino Allegri Community School, administrated by the NGO Aquitabaquara, the Young People’s Pastoral Center, the Group of Missionary Life and the Group for Social Pastoral Action. Nevertheless, their efforts were severely reduced by the lack of material, human and economic resources.

The young victims of abuse and sexual exploitation need to leave their aggressive environments and to enter more healthy surroundings. But in Fortaleza there are few refuge centers which give them the necessary attention. Attempting to complement the previously mentioned organizations, the Augustinian Recollects have created a center of refuge and integral attention in the Spiritual Condominium Uirapuru (CEU). Its base is an association of organizations that in only one physical space have brought together different social projects. These include: single mothers, AIDS sufferers, prisoners, street children, drug addicts, and now the Saint Monica’s Home (St. Monica’s Homes) for young girls in the situation or grave risk of commercial sexual exploitation.

The Recollects project continues working in a semi-open way in Ceara Cove, through a network of action with the different organizations which work in the district. They make home visits, distribute food, create cultural and formative spaces with music or reading, and determine which young girls will be given refuge in the CEU. More than three years passed since the first studies up until the launch of the first refuge center. It has not been time spent in vain, but rather a labour which is now prospering: contact with organizations, finding relevant spaces, the creation of infrastructure, defining the teaching method, the legal work and obtaining the relevant permission from public organizations…

 

 

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