Always in Mission, history of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine, available in Spanish, Portuguese and English.

The history of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine published under the title Siempre en Misión is now available in English and Portuguese in electronic format on our website.

The Commission for the IV Centenary of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine and the Commission for Communication and Publications jointly presented in November 2021 the history of the Province, under the title “Siempre en Misión”, written in a choral form and with an informative intention.

In the case of Spanish, a total of 224 pages were published in paper, a book presented on the feast of All Saints of the Augustinian Family of that year, November 13, 2021, in Madrid. A few days earlier, on October 22, the digital version had also been published, in PDF, available on this same website since then.

Logically, the effort had to be completed with the Portuguese and English versions, given that they are also official languages of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine.

The Portuguese version was entrusted to the Brazilian professor Danilo Soares, who carried out its complete translation, while the English version has been, like the Spanish one, a choral work, coordinated by Professor Luis E. Romanillos (Philippines), and with the collaboration of religious from the Province of Saint Ezekiel Moreno. On the other hand, the Augustinian Recollect José Manuel Romero made a final revision to unify styles and vocabulary.

It has not been easy due to various circumstances to reach a final destination, but, finally, it has been achieved. And both are now available on this same web page. This version, in both cases, has 212 pages, since certain indexes (of names and places), the glossary and other elements have been eliminated that make sense in a paper publication but not in an electronic edition where, for example, searches are simpler and are done by the same operating system.

This book was one of the main contributions to the celebrations of the IV Centenary (1621-2021) of the Province. Its pages include the description of the main events of the former Province of Saint Augustine, which joined that of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine in 2018 to form a single one.

Its structure is informative and not scientific: it lacks footnotes and the citations of sources and authors are limited. One third of the content is the “continuous” history of the Province; another third is supplements that give context, explain it or humanize it; the last third is graphic information: photographs, paintings, tables, diagrams…

The history itself occupies a century per chapter in the case of the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 21st centuries; the 20th century is divided into two, due to the profusion of events and the complexity of geographical spaces: before and after Vatican II as an ecclesial event that meant a “before” and an “after” for the entire Church.

Regarding the supplements, on the pages with a blue background there are 37 biographies that contribute to humanizing the history; on a green background, information on communities, ministries, areas of work, pastoral activities, missions and social works, special services and members of the Augustinian-Recollect Family. Finally, the orange pages contain reviews of buildings, objects, works of art and infrastructure.

The reader is presented with almost 300 images, including 61 photographs from before 1950 and 142 from today; 50 paintings and pictures; 17 tables with data; and some prayers and hymns to the patron saint and the IV Centenary.

Furthermore, this rewriting of the history of the Province has served to completely renew the “About us” menu on this website in three languages, thus updating the information on the history of the Province from a web concept, and not from an electronic book, as in the case of PDFs.