Saint Ezekiel Moreno saw the importance of the Recollection remaining in the capital of Colombia. His clairvoyance allowed him to recover this cloister in 1889, which, 134 years later, became the Cultural Center of Spain in Bogota.
When the Augustinian Recollect Saint Ezekiel Moreno (Alfaro, La Rioja, Spain, 04/09/1848 – Monteagudo, Navarra, Spain, 08/19/1906) arrived in Colombia at the head of a group of seven religious from the Monteagudo Convent ( Navarra, Spain), he ignored the voices that advised him to settle in El Desierto de la Candelaria, in Ráquira (Boyacá), 144 kilometers northeast of the capital, since there was no accommodating place to stay in Bogota.
This group of religious had the responsibility of reviving the Augustinian Recollection in Colombia, after in 1861 it had lost all its convents due to the government’s confiscation laws. Thus, between 1889 and 1899 up to 65 religious from the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine joined the Colombian Recollect Province. Saint Ezekiel led and initiated this mission.
He saw that it was necessary to set foot in the Capital, even if it was a temporary accommodation. And there he went, along with another religious, to a shack near the church of La Candelaria, whose property for the Augustinian Recollects had managed to maintain with great difficulty one of the Colombian religious, Victorino Rocha. On January 2, the Candelaria festival, in 1889, Saint Ezekiel and his companion, Friar Santiago Matute, settled there.
At first, the convent, which Ezekiel thought was “magnificent”, could only be admired from the outside. These were very troubled times and the Government had seized it. The Council Seminary was located in it, so neither the Nuncio nor the Archbishop of Bogota wanted to hear about returning it to the Recollects. This was clearly stated to the friar recently arrived from Spain.
However, Providence came to the aid of Friar Ezekiel and the Recollects, causing both opponents –Nuncio and Archbishop– to leave the scene that same year, the second due to death. And the substitutes for both were in favor of the transfer of three large halls in which to build housing for the friars.
On May 13, 1892, a satisfied Ezekiel could already give the news to his superior general: “We are going to get involved in works to leave a comfortable house for about twelve religious.”
Saint Ezekiel Moreno did not reside in Bogota for more than five years, from 1889 to 1894. Afterwards he passed through the place countless times, and at all times he had to resort to this house, the nerve center for everything. He had intuited it like this and could well verify it, when from Casanare or from distant Pasto he made efforts or required information. In the second photo that accompanies this article we can see Saint Ezekiel (center) in the Bogota convent, around May or June 1905, with Manuel Fernández (left) and Gregorio Segura (right).
Thanks to Friar Ezekiel’s foresight and tenacity, it was possible to recover ownership and full use of La Candelaria, which since then has rendered innumerable services. And it will soon provide Colombian and international society with new cultural services.
Thus, on February 1, 2023, the eve of the liturgical feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple or of Candelaria, an agreement was signed between the Augustinian Recollects and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) to install a Cultural Center in the Cloister. The agreement, with a duration of twenty years, includes the restoration and subsequent opening of cultural, training and social projection spaces.
La Candelaria is how this temple of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine is popularly known, of solid construction, built in 1685, although it was only blessed at the end of 1703; This Marian invocation gives its name to the Augustinian Recollect Province that emerged in Colombia at the beginning of the 17th century, for which they earned the nickname of candlesticks in the country. And La Candelaria is the name of this monumental Bogota district where the Cathedral, the Archdiocesan Office and many of the main museums come together.
The house and cloisters recovered by Saint Ezequiel have come to serve as the Provincial Curia and, in recent decades, have housed the Augustinian College of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine. Now they will be the newest Cultural Center in Spain, the second in Colombia, after the one in Cartagena of Indias.
It joins the 19 existing in the world, 17 in America and two in sub-Saharan Africa. These venues usually have classrooms-workshops, an auditorium, an exhibition hall, multipurpose artistic spaces, a library, a media library, a medialab and spaces for reflection.
The Bogota Workshop School will participate in the rehabilitation and recovery of the building, which trains heritage recovery trades, while creating employment for youth.
The Recollects or Candelarios will continue to serve the local population in the temple and in another of the cloisters. In this way, they save the inheritance received, in some way, through the efforts of Saint Ezekiel Moreno, who established the center of operations for the regeneration of the Province of La Candelaria here at the end of the 19th century.
