The Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine now has a single community in the Brazilian State of Ceara. A general coordinator already manages the daily management of Saint Monica Home, in contact and coordination with the Recollect titular director, who no longer resides on site.
The prior provincial of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, in coordination and listening to the religious of the Delegation of Brazil, has agreed to a significant modification of the presence of this Province in the Brazilian state of Ceara and, specifically, in its capital, Fortaleza.
For several months in the community of Fortaleza there had been only one religious, in charge of the actions of the Charitable Association of the Augustinian Recollects in Fortaleza (ABARF). He also collaborated occasionally and unofficially with the Parish of Saint Francis of Asíssi, located in the Jangurussu neighborhood (50,000 inhabitants).
From the year 2000 to 2016, the Province of Saint Nicholas maintained the Postulancy of Saint Augustine in Fortaleza, in the neighborhood of Barra do Ceara. But since that year, 2016, the candidates for religious life of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine have been studying in Franca (São Paulo), together with the Brazilian aspirants and postulants of the Province of Saint Thomas of Villanova.
For its part, the Province of Our Lady of Consolation of the Order of Saint Augustine (OSA), based in Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais, Brazil), has taken over both the Saint Augustine Seminary, which they have acquired and already own legally, as of service to the pastoral ministries of Barra do Ceara.
After leaving the seminary, the community of Augustinian Recollects began to live in a simple house in the Jangurussu neighborhood from which they attended to the social projects of ABARF. However, the forecasts of having more religious and new tasks have not been able to materialize and, over time, it has resulted in only one religious living in the house.
The Constitutions of the Augustinian Recollects require the presence of at least three religious in each house to enable the charismatic life proper to this Order, which require the existence of a community. It is evident that a single religious cannot form a community.
The material house will continue to be the property of the Order, since its usefulness is manifest. Thus, the six religious of the only Augustinian Recollect community in Ceara, located in Guaraciaba do Norte, 300 kilometers west of Fortaleza, often have to go to the capital as the only point of connection on trips, a place of health care, commercial space and state and federal administrative headquarters.
Since no Augustinian Recollect religious reside permanently in Fortaleza, on July 17 the new general coordinator, Luiza Aparecida, a psychologist who has worked at the Saint Monica Home since its inauguration in 2009, took office. She manages the day by day at Saint Monica and the Saint Augustine Psychosocial Center. She is also the legal representative and assumes the legal guardianship of the beneficiaries of the Home.
The Augustinian Recollect José García Corcuera, until now general director and head, remains with the second position. He lives in Guaraciaba do Norte and travels to Fortaleza whenever necessary. He ensures that ABARF continues to fulfill the purposes for which it was created and preserves its ideology according to its Statutes and the Augustinian Recollect charism.
In addition, the regular director ensures the quality of the service, which he constantly evaluates, and by scrupulous observation of all municipal, state and federal legal regulations on the protection of minors. He will also decide, if it is the case, on the incorporation of new workers or volunteers and will review the accounting.
The Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine continues to be the owner of ABARF, the Saint Monica Home and the Saint Augustine Psychosocial Center. To support this socio-evangelizing task, it continues to be in charge of financial solvency, maintenance of facilities and relations with the Uirapurú Spiritual Condominium (CEU), the entity where, together with Saint Monica Home, several socio-evangelizing projects for families are being built. religious and Catholic associations.
Saint Monica Home currently has 16 workers and a community of three Augustinian Recollects of the Heart of Jesus nuns of Venezuelan origin, who attend to both their usual functions within the project organization chart and the pastoral area and religious formation.
Saint Monica Home is the only specialized care center for girls and adolescents victims of abuse in the Brazilian state of Ceara (9.2 million inhabitants, 148,894.4 km², the equivalent of twice Castilla-La Mancha in Spain or the Mexican state of Coahuila). There is nothing like it in the rest of the State, be it public or private, specialized or of a more general nature.
All the receptions arrive after a judicial order or from the competent authorities that guarantee the need for protection, schooling, therapy and preparation for their subsequent reintegration into society.
It enjoys a prestige achieved with work and effort over the years and has been awarded by government entities and civil society. Its mission is to recover lives that are too young but that are already submerged in the most absolute marginalization, exploitation and misery, doomed to failure and social exclusion, with significant wounds caused by their aggressors not only in their bodies, but also in their minds and hearts..
The Saint Augustine Psychosocial Center tries, for its part, to carry out prevention work so that there are no new victims of this type. It works especially with single-parent families headed by women who have previously been victims, so as not to repeat history, or families with great vulnerability and who have minor daughters.
For the Augustinian Recollects, ABARF is a privileged platform to approach healing the sores of the most absolute poverty and the most radical abandonment, a space to delve into, in the words of Pope Francis, the existential and social peripheries of the world.
