Seventy years ago, in February of 1945, the 337-year old history of Saint Nicholas Intramuros in Manila was crushed under the weight of bombs. It was the mother house of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, the missionary province of the Order of Augustinian Recollects.
The decisions that through three centuries the priors provincial with their council took in this house must have been numerous and of great import. But the meeting held on 19 August 1898 occurred during a truly dramatic situation, unique in the entire history of the Province and the Order.
The Filipinos’ revolt against Spain had exploded two years earlier, and the revolutionaries were hunting the Spaniards, including the friars, throughout the archipelago. Not a few religious lost their lives during the persecution: 34 were Augustinian Recollects, the Order that most suffered, their number representing two thirds of all missionary deaths. Eighty five others were arrested and held captive.
The religious who were able to escape did so in disarray, to neighboring countries, even to Spain; and many were able to take refuge in Manila. The two Recollect convents of the capital city, San Nicolas Intramuros and San Sebastian, were overcrowded.
Under such terrible and extreme circumstances, prior provincial Francisco Ayarra met his councilors to study possible exits. From Rome, the Order’s procurator general before the Holy See, fray Enrique Perez, agonizingly monitored the course of events. He contacted Latin American bishops, above all of Brazil and Venezuela, in search of fields of action for the missionaries who were packed in the few houses in the Philippines and Spain.
Having obtained the needed permits from the different places willing to accept the Recollects, he sent urgent notice to his confreres informing them of the possibility. Initially, it seemed a message destined to fail, since Manila was blockaded by the United States Navy that a few months earlier, on 1 May, had sunk the Spanish fleet in the battle of Cavite.
Contrary to expectations, the message arrived, and at the most opportune moment at that. On that day, the Provincial Council meeting in Intramuros decided to take the leap to America. As soon as the meeting ended, the prior provincial himself went to the other Manila convent, San Sebastian, and informed the prior, Fr. Patricio Adell, of the whole matter.
The latter immediately volunteered to head the first mission, which by mid-October made a layover in San Francisco on its way to Panama. After him, the second group sailed in Hong Kong on 24 February 1899.
By the middle of that year, more than 40 Augustinian Recollects were already working in Panama, Venezuela and Brazil. From then on, the Augustinian Recollect missionary horizon would shift its center of gravity. In that new and ample field of missionary work which runs from the United States to Argentina, more than half of the Augustinian Recollect religious are presently engaged.
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