Some of the treasures of the history of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine of the Order of Augustinian Recollects and the environments and spaces where it has carried out its work throughout history and today.
In the wake of the upheaval stemming from the expulsion of foreign missionaries and the loss of all contact with the native religious who remained within the People’s Republic of China, the Province sought an adjoining territory to avoid losing the use of Mandarin. The Dominican José Cheng of Kaohsiung in Taiwan, who had met the Recollect missionaries in Hong Kong, was in need of clergy. In an alignment of common interests, four Recollects arrived in his diocese in 1963.
During the period of greatest expansion in 1998, there were nine Recollects in Taiwan. When the Province of Saint Ezekiel Moreno was established, the houses were divided between the two Provinces until 2011, when the entire territory was handed over to the Saint Ezekiel Moreno Province. By 2021, there was only one Recollect community in Taiwan.
The first phase was that of the pioneers. Two Chinese Recollects learned Minan, a local dialect, while two Spanish confreres were learning Mandarin. They took charge of four parishes in a zone with a Buddhist majority, in a country where foreigners were subjected to many legal restrictions.
In Taliao, they attended to Santa Cruz and San Nicolas de Tolentine, where they inaugurated a complex with a church, a convent, and a kindergarten in 1965, its nerve centre and the only Recollect house today.
In Linyuan, they established the Parish of Saint Augustine in 1964. Its importance lay in its service to Filipino migrant workers in the industrial zone.
Saint Joseph Parish was in Chinang Li, Hsiaokang. Entrusted to the Order in 1970, the majority of its inhabitants were immigrants from the province of Shandong in China.
The Recollects collaborated in the field of formation at the diocesan seminary and with the Dominican sisters. They taught at military academies, Cheng Shan University, and Wen-Tzao College of Philosophy and Letters, as well as the Merchant Marine Academy. They translated Spanish classical and spiritual literature into Chinese. One of their apostolate fields and a source of displeasure were the kindergartens, where any pastoral task was prohibited by law.
On the last day of 1990, their range of activity expanded to three aboriginal districts of Wu-Tai and Machia-Hsiang, in the central cordillera. They ministered to the Paiwan indigenous people, who have traits very similar to those of the Filipinos and dialects with an affinity to Tagalog. The majority have converted to Christianity, and twenty percent are Catholics.
