Author Archives: Fraternidad Iesus Caritas

50th aniversary of the Cominitat de Jesús, family of Charles de FOUCAULD

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Dear friends,

September 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the consecration of the first brothers and sisters to the Community of Jesus. The first commitments were made in the hermitage of Santa Creu in Montserrat (Barcelona) on 29th September 1968, our official birthday, in the presence of founder layman Pere Vilaplana who died thirty-five years ago. Today, accompanied by you all, relatives and friends, we celebrate 50 years of community life.

Montserrat saw the birth of our community after ties of communion and friendship with several monks of that abbey, especially with hermit monk Father Estanislau Llopart. He presided over that celebration and was during all the early years a spiritual counselor and guide in our personal growth and in that of the young community.

It was three years since the closing of Council Vatican II and renovation could still be felt in the Church. We, students, workers, young men and women who were making our way in life heard the call to commit to the Gospel in our daily lives. Our country was then under a dictatorship, after a fratricidal war of painful memory. However, cultural and social changes were underway, and a number of trade and students’ unions as well as cultural and spiritual associations were emerging. With some more permeable Pyrenees that allowed us to look beyond, especially towards France, we got to know movements of spiritual renewal. We were drawn by the message of Charles de Foucauld and Albert Peyriguère: living Nazareth, being Christians “at the heart of the world”. Contemplative and missionary at the same time. A maybe too ambitious objective but one which has been essential to us all the way through the years and still is today.

All of you children, parents, friends, companions in faith, neighbours of Tarrés know we have tried to lead dedicated lives. Each of us in different ways, according to our ages, jobs and personal and family situations. The gift of God has brought us here with the help of caring counsellors, your generous love and the contribution of all our brothers and sisters who have devoted part of their lives to the Community of Jesus. Inevitably, and due to our fragile human nature, we have gone through difficulties, crises and split-ups. However, there have been joyful times of sincere inner research, of gratuitousness in our commitment, of risk, growth and maturation.

Our community, a gift of God. Living the Gospel in community, a gift of God. Friendship, a charisma that identifies us, has knotted us and given us the strength to be faithful to God’s project: “Love”. Jesus and his disciples have shown us what spiritual friendship is: both demanding and respectful, always loving.

Before finishing, we would like to say thank you to those we have met along our long journey.

First of all, we would like to thank Claretian Father Antoni Andrés who has accompanied us during all these years, discretely, humbly, always there for us. He has been a great example to all of us and a devoted friend for whom we feel the deepest affection.

We are profoundly grateful to the monks of the Benedictine abbey of Montserrat, wise counsellors and beloved friends, already departed: Father Abat Cassià Just, Father Estanislau Llopart, Father Vilanova, Father Oriol Diví and, lately, Father Joan Carles Elvira. They will always be with us.

We would like to thank the diocesan bishops of Barcelona, Tarragona, Lleida, Valencia and Jaca for their support, and all the priests, monks and nuns from these and other dioceses. Most especially, Cardinal Narcís Jubany, who firmly believed in our project and promoted it.

We cannot forget the religious order of Hieronymite nuns at Sant Maties Monastery in Barcelona, a community of contemplative nuns who have offered us counsel and unconditional friendship along these fifty years.

Our most sincere gratitude to fraternities, communities and groups of the Spiritual Family of Charles de Foucauld in our country and abroad. They have been and are an example of commitment for us, and most of all, friends in the Friend.

We are particularly grateful to the people of Tarrés. The community of Jesus would not be what it is today without that first warm welcome 50 years ago. You are the reason why we are celebrating our anniversary here, today.

Finally, it would be unfair not to express our gratitude and love to our families: to our parents, most of them already departed, to our children and grandchildren. They all carry with them a trace of the spirit of the Community of Jesus. We humbly and joyfully believe that, with the help of God, we have instilled in them some of the values that guide us, like True Friendship.

Thank you very much to all of you on behalf of the brothers and sisters of the Community of Jesus.

Tarrés, 16th September 2018

PDF: 50th aniversary Comunitat de Jesús, family Charles de FOUCAULD, eng

Newsletter summer 2018. Fraternities United Estates

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In this issue:

  • Priests with Current Dues … 2
  • Everywhere is Our Monastery – Days of Rest and Renewal in Detroit … 4
  • A Change of Culture/A New Book/Universal Brother Award … 6
  • National Fraternity … 7
  • Upcoming Dates … 8

From the Responsible

Dear Brothers,

I write this letter to you on the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Before I knew Blessed Charles, I knew St. Ignatius. Blessed Charles helped me to see the importance of being committed to prayer with a monthly desert day and a daily holy hour, but it was St. Ignatius who gave me the spiritual resources to fill those times.

Long before it came into vogue, Ignatius taught anyone who would listen how to have a personal relationship with Jesus. His concept of conversing directly with Jesus through the use of the imagination is now a time-proven method of deepening one’s faith. His insights into the spiritual life in his Spiritual Exercises are unparalleled in helping to bring people into closer relationship with God.

As Diocesan priests we are more or less left to find our own path to a solid spiritual life. Led by God’s grace and guided by wonderful mentors like Mike Smith (for Charles) and Chuck Gallagher (for Ignatius) I found a spirituality that works; that intimately connects me to Jesus and the Father’s will for my life. I know the life of an eccentric French priest living among Moslems in the Sahara is not an easy “sell” for many Diocesan priests, but I think trying to understand how and why Blessed Charles lived out his deep love for Jesus can give spiritual strength to our priestly ministry.

Read the complete document

Letter to Gianantonio, 28 August 2018

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Dear brother,
this morning you celebrated your Passover and the Lord has taken you into his arms as a most dear son. We have prayed much for you, and our prayer has not been in vain. You are in the best place among the blessed, you, who for 57 days were deprived of liberty while kidnapped in Cameroon, you, who did not lose hope in this past year of illness, you have given us every sign of peace and of confidence. “With boundless confidence…” You, who have made the Prayer of Abandonment your life, as did Charles de FOUCAULD. You, a brother loved by all those you have served, tended and worked for… I must thank you for the precious witness of your life, where you have not given up or left to others the mission the Lord entrusted to you.

Your goodbye pains me greatly, but I know that it is temporary. We shall meet in the fraternity of the Children of God and we shall recall the chain prayer campaign around the world for your freedom while kidnapped with Gilberte, whom I had the great joy of visiting in Montreal, and she showed me the objects she had during the kidnapping, and Giampaolo, your missionary companion in Cameroon. I remember with joy the news of your being freed. The bells of many churches in Spain, Italy and so many places rang out that Easter season 2014. Your kidnapping moved us to contemplate the lack of freedom for humanity, for oppressed peoples, for the poorest of the poor, the boot of the mighty that crushes the humble, the manipulation of the lives of human beings by commercial interests and the power that does not show its face, only by means of its hatchet bearers… Yet the human being and his rights, as Pope Francis so often repeats, is above all ideology.

Your Italian Fraternity, your family, your diocese of Vicenza, your friends in Cameroon, are going to miss you, and all the brothers of the Priestly Fraternity shall have you as a benchmark of missionary commitment, courageous, a man of God, who leaves a mark to encourage us to continue working for the Kingdom and its justice. Giampaolo, your mission companion in Cameroon, will continue sowing the seed of this Kingdom that grows from the small and insignificant of our world.

I had the great joy of meeting you personally in Castelfranco, Italy in 2015, and in Rudy, Poland, last Summer, sharing with you in the European Assembly of the Fraternity.

Something told me that you should take care of your health, and I said this to you. Over these past months we have been in touch and I have followed your case with concern. Today I thank the Lord for your life, for how you continued overcoming trials with that human quality of yours which teaches me to value the negative of life, knowing that if the grain of wheat does not die, it does not bear fruit. Like brother Charles, you have given everything for the most disadvantaged, and that fills me with joy, despite the pain of separation. From all that we consider painful, I am certain that something new, unexpected, positive and good for ourselves and for others emerges. Thanks for teaching me to have patience and peace.

Pray for us to God who today fills you with grace and love.

We will always remember you.

Aurelio SANZ BAEZA,
brother responsible, Priestly Fraternity Iesus Caritas,

Perín, Cartagena, Murcia, Spain, 28th August, 2018, The Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist

Biographical Note:

Gianantonio ALLEGRI, member of the Priestly Fraternity Iesus Caritas. Born 1957 in Pievebelcino (Vicenza, Italy). Ordained 1982. Curate in several parishes of Vicenza diocese. From 1991 to 2001 he worked as a Fidei Donum missionary in Cameroon. He returned to serve as Parish Priest of Magré di Schio until 2013. He returns to Cameroon and is kidnapped by Boko Haram for 57 days, with his companions, Sister Gilberte BOUSSIÈRE, from Quebec, and Giampaolo MARTA of the same diocese of Vicenza. Following his liberation, he returns to his diocese and serves as Parish Priest of Santa Maria Bertilla in Vicenza.

This morning he reached the arms of the Father after fighting cancer for a year.

PDF: Letter to Gianantonio, 28 August 2018, eng