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On January the 19^th, almost at midnight, our sister Priscila Brenes Granados, arrived at Fiumicino airport in Rome. She will enrich the community of the General curia with her presence for several months.

Sr. Priscila is from Costa Rica and she belongs to “Our Lady of Guadalupe” Province but, during the last five years she has been carrying out her mission in Mexico, concretely in the community of Tabasco, working as a director in the “Oasis de Paz” Family Home where our Community receives, accompanies and trains unprotected girls whose rights have been violated.

The Province “Our Lady of Guadalupe”, through the CLAR (Latin American Conference of Religious), has been offered a scholarship for one Sister to get the “Diploma in Minors’ Protection”, granted by the “Center for Child Protection” in the Pontifical Gregorian University, in Rome. The course, is organized this time in Spanish, it will begin on February the 8^th 2021 and will end about June the 15^th 2021.

The objective of the Diploma is to promote the protection of minors at an academic and professional level, through a training program whose principles are, first the victims, from a Christian vision of the human being in his own culture and a multidisciplinary perspective, fed and inspired in the Christian spirituality and the Gospel.

Among the competencies and skills to be acquired there are the following:

• To recognize the signs of abuse in the victims and of risk in the abusers.
• To help and support the victims of abuse and the secondary victims.
• To reflect about the spiritual and theological implications of abuse.
• To include spirituality in the objectives and measures of protection.
• To create protection networks in their countries, local churches, religious communities and other circles.
• To help the Church leaders to appropriately handle complaints.
• To identify the instruments for an adequate intervention.
• To adapt the specific guidelines implementation for the protection of minors in each context.
• To provide training courses about the protection of minors and the prevention in schools, parishes, formation houses, etc.

We wish to Sr. Priscila that this experience may be fruitful and helpful for her to grow humanly and spiritually and to bring her valid elements that will illuminate and stimulate the apostolic work she carries out, together with her community in favor of the most vulnerable minors whom they serve and accompany.

Welcome Sr. Priscila!

On February the 2^nd, Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, we celebrate the World Day for Consecrated Life that Pope John Paul II established 25 years ago. This celebration invites to present to the Lord the dedication and service of many consecrated men and women, a living presence of Christ in the midst of our world and, at the same time, prompts us to continue carrying out the mission we have received and sharing each day with our brothers and sisters the light of the Risen Lord that illuminates all darkness.

The motto of the XXV Day of Consecrated Life of this year 2021 has been: «Consecrated life, a parable of fraternity in a wounded world». In the message that, on this occasion, the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life sent to all consecrated people, we find a constant reference to the Encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” written by Pope Francis and inspired in Saint Francis of Assisi; through it, the Pope invites us to operate together to rekindle in all «an universal aspiration to fraternity» and “to dream together” (n. 8) so that “in the face of present-day attempts to eliminate or ignore others, we may be able to respond with a new vision of fraternity and social friendship (n. 6). This Encyclical is a precious gift for every form of consecrated life that, without hiding the many wounds that affect fraternity, may find in it the roots of its prophecy.

In our community in Rome, we celebrated the Consecrated Life Day´s Eucharist  together with our Capuchin Tertiary Brothers of the General Curia renewing our consecration to the Lord, in the Church and within our charismatic family at the service of our discarded, most vulnerable, injured and abandoned brothers, at the edge of the existence path.

We tried to express the very motto of this day through the following signs:

• A lighted lamp: through it we manifested that we are urged to be the light received from the Lord, a “light to enlighten the nations”, in the very realities we live;
• A skein of wool that, once woven, creates a network, intertwining the fraternity: through it we asked Mary, an expert weaver, to accompany us in our follow-up and dedication as consecrated persons and we gave thanks for the gift of the brothers;
• A poster presenting some of our world wounds: through it we expressed that, together with Mary, the offering Virgin, our Mother of Sorrows whose soul was pierced by a sword, we feel called to be a balsam and a compassionate and merciful presence for our brothers and sisters whom we accompany and serve.

At the end of the liturgy of the Word, holding in our hands our lit lamps, we renewed our commitment to live in obedience, poverty and chastity and we prayed to the Lord that He may be the “All” of our lives and to give credibility to our missionary announcement, as men and women of solidarity, communion and love for the others.

After the Eucharist, we shared the meal in an atmosphere of authentic joy and brotherhood. With the words of our Founding Father, Luis Amigó: Let us give thanks to God for all!

During the months of November and December 2020, the General Government has held several online meetings, with the common purpose of accompanying the sisters of the Congregation, strengthening our fraternal bonds in this special time that we all live, transmit hope and share life with the different groups and communities called together. We note some of these encounters:

• The meeting of the General Government with the Demarcation Government Teams took place from 16 to 18 November, with the participation of 35 sisters. In addition to the above, it was a privileged moment to present concerns and initiatives that emerged during the year 2020, glimpsing together concrete actions for the future. The nuclei emphasized especially revolved around the pandemic, the formation, the accompaniment of communities and sisters, the economy, the reality of the apostolic works, the celebration of the chapters and renewal of the relevant services, the socio-political situation in the countries and its repercussions, also pointing out, among all, some clues that lead us to continue looking for and making way, for which no one has elaborated recipes. We must stay awake, reading the concrete signs that are appearing, trying to give new, risky answers of shared solidarity, not from the usual schemes, but from a new way of understanding life, to which the pandemic continues to push us.

The evaluation of the meeting by the sisters was very positive, although with the feeling that many things had remained «in the inkwell», because time is always short.

• On November 19 and 20, the General Government met with the Formators of the postulancy, novitiate and juniorate stages of the Congregation, with the participation of 17 Masters from four continents. The reunion of some of the formators who already knew each other and the knowledge of others who have subsequently assumed this mission or who did not know each other, already justified this fraternal space, but also, according to the proposed objective, shared concerns and experiences lived by each in the different stages, around the accompaniment of the processes of young women, the discernment and the application of the contents and evaluation guidelines «ad experimentum» that we are managing in the Congregation until the celebration of the next General Chapter.

The meeting was of great wealth and mutual support, detecting many common realities, despite the different cultures and specific situations of each country or continent. Some points to be taken into account by the formators themselves and also the communities were clarified.

The evaluation of the formation sisters was highly positive and we hope to be able to repeat this type of encounter.

• The General Government also organized a meeting with the novices of the single Spanish-speaking Novitiate in Guatemala (6 November) and the formation team of the same (24 November). Changing stages, 3 meetings were held with the juniors of the Congregation: in Spanish and English (25 November at different times ) and in French (29 November). On November 21, the meeting took place with the 12 communities of Asia, of the Viceprovince General «Santa Clara». And up to and including December 17, there have been meetings with various communities from all continents, having prioritized the homes of elderly and sick sisters, as well as the small fraternities, located in more distant places, which are multiplied in some countries, sometimes with only one or two presences. It has been a great joy for the General Team to be able to enter these warm, open corners of our houses, to share with simplicity the life of the sisters, their fears and joys, the reality that they are assuming on a personal level and of the apostolic and pastoral presences, accompanying people, serving the poor, children, listening to those who suffer…

A beautiful opportunity also, to congratulate each other with some Christmas of this year 2020, so different from other occasions and at the same time so faithful to reality, around the Family of Nazareth, our patroness, contemplating Jesus in the center, together with Mary and Joseph.