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Kairos, a time of special grace,
marks the 20th Anniversary of the founding of the Vicariate of St. John of Sahagun
of Chulucanas, Peru. During the week long celebration the second vicariate chapter
was held, presided by the Prior General. The celebration began on the Feast of
Our Mother of Consolation with 12 students, who are finishing their three years
of philosophical studies, being received as postulantes by Fr. Roberto Prevost.
The following day a new Vicariate Council was installed and during the two days
of meetings and interchange of ideas, the program for the Vicariate for its next
four years Following
the end of the chapter, there was a day of reflection and celebration to mark
both the Grand Union of the Order and the 20th anniversary of the founding of
the Vicariate. This was finalized with the solemn profession of vows of Delfio
Lopez in the church of St. Augustine's in the historic center of Trujillo. The
church was the first Augustinian foundation in Trujillo in the early 1600s. From
the monastery there, scores of friars were sent into the Andean mountains and
into the northern parts of Peru and Ecuador to evangelize during colonial times.
In that church, the archbishop of Lima, and the patron of the bishops of America,
St. Toribio, ordained bishop of Quito, Finally the following day, after a morning of touring some archaeological sites, the community gathered in the chapel of St. Mary, Mother of the Church, where the Augustinians serve presently in Trujillo. There, Bishop Dan Turley, the bishop of Chulucanas ordained a priest Eleodoro Villanueva, our first vocation from the city of Trujillo. It was a week full of activities
and symbolically culminated in the solemn profession and ordination of two Peruvian
Augustinians. In the twenty years since the Vicariate was founded we have set
a steady course towards building the Orden in Peru. Presently, of the 21 solemnly
professed members of the Vicariate, only 7 are from the United States, one from
Mexico and the rest from Peru. So the Peruvian Augustinians are now a majority
and growing little by little. This year, marking our 20th anniversary, was particularly
blessed with ordinations and solemn professions. We celebrated the anniversary of the Vicariate in the framework of the Jubilee year in the Order to mark the Grand Union. 750 years ago the Pope called together groups of religious living in Italy who followed the Rule of St. Augustine, to ask them to form a new and larger mendicant order to respond to the needs of the growing cities of Europe. Bringing together such a diverse group of people with customs and habits was not easy and within one month a couple of these groups separated from what is called the Grand Union. Others persevered and became what is the Order of St. Augustine. It is telling that those that decided to separate and not join forces together have all disappeared. Only those that sacrificed something of their own identity to form a new one with others have survived over 7 centuries of the ups and downs of Church and World history. If these groups had not come together under the Pope's direction, it is fair to say that all of them would have disappeared, unable to adapt to the changing circumstances. This Grand
Union was imitated in a small way (call it perhaps the Small Union) twenty years
ago when the different American provinces, working independently in the missionary
dioceses of Chulucanas, Peru, decide to form one vicariate. Because there were
different customs and ways of working, the initial steps were taken slowly, with
many fears having to be overcome. However, slowly the vicariate began to take
shape. It is safe to say that if this step had not been taken, today the Augustinians
in northern Peru would be a small group of older friars from the U.S., attending
a constantly reduced number of apostolic commitments. However,
the story is different than that, precisely because this "small union"
was forged and with it the beginning of a formation program for Peruvian Augustinians.
In light of the positive experience that we had in beginning our own formation
program, the Augustinians friars working in two other regions of Peru (Iquitos
and Apurimac-Cuzco), also started vocational promotion on an increased scale and
the common formation house in Trujillo became the starting point of a new reality
in Peru. Today in three missionary regions of Peru the Order is growing and constituting
a Peruvian expression of Augustinian religious life whose roots can be traced,
sometimes directly, and other ways indirectly, to the union twenty years ago of
the Augustinians of the California, Chicago and Villanova provinces of the United
States.
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developed. It is a program that looks towards a hopeful future as the Vicariate
continues its quest to become more and more a Peruvian reality.
Ecuador
the former Augustinian provincial of Peru, Friar Luis Lopez de Solis. So it is
an historic site and an appropriate one to bring closure to the celebration of
the anniversary.
