d) Unexpected spring in America

The reaction capacity of the Recollects was also demonstrated in large joint ventures. Perhaps the most important was the revival of the Province of Colombia, which was in a state of agony. Successive expeditions from Spain were, little by little and at the cost of enormous sacrifices, raising again the Recollection building in that country. The captain of such a glorious company was Saint Ezequiel Moreno, Bishop of Pasto and champion of the Colombian Church against liberalism. In 1992, in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), John Paul II presented him before the entire Latin American Episcopate as the Saint of America.

However, at the end of the 19th century, the hardest test came to the Recollection, the one that made it sink the dregs of sacrifice: the Philippine Revolution (1898), where there were about three hundred and fifty Recollects. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the friars had to escape as best they could, leaving thirty-one dead on the Islands.

However, what was apparently a catastrophe forced the religious to escape to America. After countless ups and downs, the Recollect banner was planted in Panama and in Venezuela (1898), Brazil (1899), Guayana, Trinidad… This will be the seed that will spread in American lands until it reaches its current roots and breadth. In these countries they have to fight at the beginning with the hardest ministries and places, which sow dead religious at the onslaught of dangers and bad conditions. It is the beginning of the rebirth. As is law in the Church of Christ, the seed of faith and the word grows when watered with sweat, tears and blood.