Category Archives: Letters

Dear brothers,

This week we have worked at the house in Vernon of François MARIN, who has been caring for us like an older brother. His fraternal and welcoming manner encourages us to work tranquilly in peace.

We remembered all the fraternities, brothers with problems, the Church of which we are part, we prayed for those who suffer and rejoiced in instances of fraternity which are ever more alive and faithful to the Gospel. On our first morning we shared with Jean-François’ fraternity, praying together, doing a Review of Life and sharing lunch. It was a joy to embrace Michel PINCHON and the other brothers.

OUR FRATERNITIES

The experience of the first Pan-American Assembly in Mexico gave us much light in our work The conclusions which are published on our www.iesuscaritas.org web page, “Letter from Cuernavaca, News and Proposals” speak of life, of the present reality, with calls and proposals not only for the fraternities of the Americas, but for those of the whole world. We wish Fernando TAPIA, recently elected continental responsible for all America, all the best for this service to the fraternity, which he has taken on with joy.

We are encouraged by the formation of fraternities in Haiti, Bolivia, Columbia, and the possibility of new fraternities in Senegal and Zimbabwe. We have looked into how to help them in order to support their initiatives.

The death of Hermann [Steinert], from Germany caused us sadness yet at the same time hope, as he was a loved and admired brother for us. The health of Giuseppe [Colavero], in Italy, is a concern for us and we prayed for him, feeling very close to the whole Italian fraternity.

Increasingly we feel called by the charism of Brother Charles to live Nazareth and Universal Brotherhood in our pastoral ministries, parishes, seminaries, chapels, hospitals, prisons, and reception centres for people in need. We feel we should publish a document on this, namely, how to be priests of the fraternity with this Nazareth life-style in both our work and everyday dealings with people.

CALLS

As part of the International Team, we received the proposals of the Pan-American Assembly and we committed ourselves to implementing them. We have been asked to put together a directory for the Month of Nazareth, which would serve all countries, taking into account social peculiarities and cultural differences. We have contacted Manuel POZO, of the Spanish Fraternity: He is going to draw up this document which we will publish as soon as possible.

A call to live this Centenary Year of the Death of Charles de FOUCAULD, as an expression of the life of a holy man who helps us and the whole Church to live universal brotherhood, despite the multiple signs of hatred among people, the suffering caused by wars, and the exile of displaced people in the world; the call of Pope Francis to live Mercy with our hearts and hands, and not with rituals and clerical forms of facile remedies to salve peoples’ consciences, but with our commitment to active reconciliation between people.

The work “Apasionados por Dios y por la humanidad. El Papa Francisco y las grandes intuiciones de Charles de Foucauld”, (Impassioned for God and for Humanity. Pope Francis and the Great Intuitions of Charles de Foucauld) of Javier PINTO, Chilean theologian and a lay member of the fraternity, published in Spanish, French and English on our website which served as a basis for a great part of our reflection in the Pan-American Assembly, inspired us to look at the reality of the Charism of Brother Charles in us and in the Church, and its unquestionable relevance, especially in this Year of Mercy.

On Thursday 17th, Aurelio went to París to have an interview with Jacques GAILLOT, and it was a great gift from God for him to meet him personally. His close and simple, prophetic and evangelic life-style is an asset for the Church and the fraternity. People of that kind, who, without making any noise, continue to work for the Kingdom with the very poorest, committing themselves to the last and least, developing a work of presence and action in groups of marginalised or people who need to be listened to, are those we most need. His meeting with Pope Francis was a recognition of his intense work on the peripheries, both geographical and existential, and he will help us in the International Fraternity with his writings and witness. Thanks, Jacques, for your availability for this service to the Fraternity.

FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE

In July of this year we will have the Asia Assembly in the Philippines. We encourage the brothers of Asian countries to take part in it and we wish good work to our brother Arthur [Charles], the continental responsible and to the preparation team.

Besides, the Month of Nazareth programmed to take place in the United States in July this year, and directed by Mark [Mertes], and the Month of Nazareth in England in the month of August, organised by Donald [Stoker], lead us to pray for the brothers who will be there and who will have the opportunity to live in fraternity the prayer, the Desert, the Review of Life, manual work, and the sharing of all that inspires them in their pastoral ministry and their personal lives.

Following the seminars in Viviers in July 2015, the spirit that they generated on the theme “Diocesan priests, servants of the encounter between Muslims and Christians”, leads us to continue the sharing between the fraternities of Europe and the fraternities present in the Magreb and the Sahel, at this time, so prone to tension and to all sorts of extremism: the encounter between Muslims and Christians is urgent and indispensable. We ought to follow this path of dialogue in life, just as Brother Charles opened it in Beni Abbès and Tamanrasset.

For all the activities of the International Fraternity (continental and world assemblies, The Month of Nazareth, and trips undertaken by the International Team) the International Fund must have resources. Once again we remind of the need to share in order to be able to carry out all that is planned, as solidarity between the different regions.

We are preparing the documentation of the Memory of the Priestly Fraternity Iesus Caritas, from March 2015 to March 2016, for the Congregation of the Clergy, in line with our commitment with this institution following approval received in April of last year.

We have made a first reflection on the topics to be addressed at our next meeting of the International Team in October in Kansas, USA., where Mark will host us, and we want to gather again with joy in that atmosphere of fraternity, in the work and in sharing our lives, and at the service of all the fraternities.

We entrust ourselves to your prayer, that you put the Fraternity before Jesus each day, although we do not all know each other, the life of the brothers, their projects, their health, their concerns, and their joys. A big fraternal embrace in these days approaching Easter.

Jean-François and Aurelio

Vernon, Normandy, France,
18 March, 2016
(Thank you very much, dear Liam for the English translation)

PDF: Letter of Jean-Francois and Aurelio from Vernon, March 2016

1st PAN AMERICAN ASSEMBLY OF IESUS CARITAS FRATERNITY OF PRIESTS

Cuernavaca, Mexico, 15 to 19 February 2016

Dear Brothers:

We write this letter to you with much joy and hope at the end of our First Pan American Assembly. Three brothers from the International Team and delegates from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, United States, México, Quebec (Canada) y Dominican Republic have met at the Retreat House “Madeleine Chollet” in Cuernavaca to pray, reflect and give new impulse and mission to the fraternities of our countries.

Providentially, our Assembly coincided in part with the visit of Pope Francis to Mexico and this permitted us to situate it within the great spiritual and ecclesial renewal movement that the Holy Spirit is breathing in our Church through the gestures, words and teachings of the Holy Father. There is a great resonance between the intuitions of Brother Charles and Pope Francis’ approach. It is a theme that we have studied deeply through a text by Javier Pinto. This reflection has confirmed the validity and reality of our spirituality in a pluralistic world which is wounded by violence, injustice, drug trafficking, corruption, exclusion and impunity; we heard of this on the first day of our Assembly.

We feel, on that matter, the historic responsibility to be the first co-workers with this Pastor come from the end of the world, in the construction of a poor Church for the poor. Like Brother Charles we want to multiply and intensify our presence in our countries in the “peripheries,” both geographic and existential, to be believable witnesses of the mercy of our Father God. Nearness, austerity, simplicity, humility and the joy of Jesus of Nazareth should mark our style of life and our manner of being pastoral.

Despite the diversity of languages and cultures we were able to understand one another, pray and work together, in a realization of Pentecost, although there were amusing things such as Mark Mertes’ inability to say the word “periferia”.

Certainly the Holy Spirit accompanied us and inspired us every day, from Eucharistic Adoration in the morning through dinner in the evening. The spirit of fraternity, collaboration, patience to understand the language of the other, joy and apostolic enthusiasm that have filled our hearts during these days are unequivocal signs of his vivifying presence. We have lived universal fraternity as our own spirituality.

Our Mexican brothers were completely devoted to taking care of us down to the slightest details, as did Sra. Edith Montes de Oca and Sra. María Elena Cruz, who each day delighted us with delicious meals. We now all feel a little Mexican having shared its history of persecution and martyrdom, a history always sheltered by the Virgin of Guadalupe and sustained by a firm faith. We feel part of this People that pilgrimages in America and each day we want to share more its destiny, its hopes and its struggles, locating ourselves, like Jesus, with the poor and excluded of our societies.

We feel a call to be more consistent with our spirituality and to help one another to live the means of spiritual growth that it offers us, particularly the MONTH OF NAZARETH. We want to revalue it and inspire to participate in it all the brothers that have not made the Month. A deep spirituality will help us to be, like Brother Charles, universal brothers, while respecting the truths of other ways of following Jesus, particularly in our presbyterates. Only permanent and prolonged contact with our beloved Brother and Lord Jesus and the fraternal life will permit us to have an evangelizing presence that is constant, fertile, joyful and hopeful in the human peripheries toward which we develop our pastoral work.

We know that the charism of Brother Charles is shared by other groups of this Spiritual Family: Little Brothers and Little Sisters, consecrated lay persons, marriages, young etc. We want to strengthen the bonds with them and make known our spirituality, especially to the young.

We are sure that the charism of Brother Charles, enriched with the testimony of so many saints and martyrs of America is a great contribution to live the faithfulness of Jesus and his gospel on our continent. Because of this we want to share it with our brothers in the presbyterate inviting them to know and to participate in our activities; this includes those in the seminary.

You will find a more detailed and flavorful account of our Assembly in the document “Chronicle of Cuernavaca” as well as a collection of proposals for growth in the specific areas of our Fraternities, to wit, Spirituality, Fraternity, Pastoral Mission, Connections within the Spiritual Family of Charles de Foucauld, and Growth. You can find this in the document “Proposals for Growth”. Both will be published in the website, www.iesuscaritas.org.

Finally, we announce to you that we have elected Fernando Tapia Miranda, a priest of the Archdiocese of Santiago in Chile, as Continental Responsible for a period of six years, to maintain and increase the connections and shared services within the Americas, and to prepare the next Continental Assembly that will take place in two years (2018).

May the Lord Jesus bless our Works and make them very fertile for the growth of our Priestly Fraternities in all of the continent. To Him be honor and glory forever and ever.

The Participants of the First Pan American Assembly

Cuernavaca, 19 February 2016.

(Thanks, Mark, for the traslation to English)

PDF: Letter from Cuernavaca, February 2016

Sorry, this entry is only available in Español.

LETTER FROM PERÍN
INTERNATIONAL TEAM
PRIEST FRATERNITY OF JESUS CARITAS

Perín, Spain, October 2015

Dear brothers,

Emmanuel, Jean-François, Félix, Mark, Mauricio and Aurelio have lived our annual meeting in Perín, Cartagena, España, in Aurelio’s house, celebrating his 60th birthday, with our eyes toward you and toward all our brothers of the fraternity while living amidst the people who have welcomed and inspired us. The joy of being together and working together is a gift of the Lord!

WHAT WE HAVE EXPERIENCED

From common prayer in Lauds, adoration and Eucharist, accompanied by the autumn rain, we have felt strengthened by our prayer, by the help of Brother Charles, who intercedes for us, and by the prophetic testimony of Pope Francis in the Synod on the Family, which we have followed very closely.

We shared a meeting with the Bishop of Cartagena, José Manuel LORCA PLANES, and also lunched with the Family of Charles de Foucauld of Murcia, welcomed by the Secular Fraternity, the fraternity of Charles de Foucauld, the Little Sisters of Jesus—with the presence of Anita, councilor of the team of Tre Fontane in Rome– and the priestly fraternity, feeling ourselves in ecclesial communion and united in the charism of a man of God, our brother Charles, who calls us in his Centenary, coinciding with the Year of Mercy, called by Pope Francis, to a conversion to dialog, not only between ourselves, but also with our brother diocesan priests, of which we form a part; a dialog and meeting with other religions and with non-believers. This makes us think of a “reciprocal conversion” in mutual respect. We want to dialog, not impose. From the July encounter in Viviers has come forth the profound realization of this very important dimension of our charism.

We have met and celebrated with many people of Perín, a friendly people, approachable and cordial, and we have learned from their family experiences and as Christians to be listeners in human and simple things. Each man or woman is our brother or sister. The two Eucharists celebrated in care centers for the elderly in Périn have impressed us. The elderly, who in our western and European society are the great forgotten ones, the aparcados, “parked away”, have told us that God is child, adolescent, young person, adult and elderly. In this Nazareth of the elderly we have not seen an “expiration date.”

We have seen the projects of the Foundation Tienda Asilo de San Pedro of Cartagena, where Aurelio works, feeling like we have shared in the life of those people who work there, the teams, the volunteers, the benefactors. In the beautiful home “Torre Nazaret”, a project of the foundation, we shared the simple and human Nazareth of being with those with AIDS, with those who by drugs, prison, or the street have been marked as outcasts, but who now are able to live in dignity, recovering some of their health and normalizing their life. It is like a big family that accepts the consequences when life itself is the problem. We felt that they loved us even without knowing us.

WHAT WE ARE BEEN CALLED TO

We are called to many things:

One very important call is to live the Centenary of Brother Charles not like a memorial of the past, but as a celebration of the actuality of his message of universal fraternity. Pope Francis has enumerated various ways to imitate the testimony of Br. Charles; in paragraph 125 of Laudato Si as an example of an evangelizer, and in the vigil for the Synod on the Family as an inspiration for the family model of Nazareth. His constant references to Brother Charles fill us with joy and we feel 100% in communion with the pope.

A call to deepen through the mystery of Nazareth: an attitude which unites contemplation, proximity to the poor and an experience of our fragility as the place we welcome the power of the resurrection. We need to live universal Fraternity in a real and concrete way, without being theoretical about life or about people.

A call to give priority to the Day in the Desert: we experience that the monthly desert is difficult for priests, overloaded as we are with work. Absorbed by pastoral activity, and the logic of being liturgical functionaries, we leave to another occasion the Desert, and this can become a bad habit. We always think about doing, doing, doing, but seldom in listening and we lose sight of the Lord’s search for us.

We feel the call to be at or go to the “periferies,” both geographical and existential, those of people with problems, without eluding our priestly vocation as priests who are called to announce the Good News, not as pastoral experiments or as spiritual tourism, but to be with the least. From Nazareth the Lord Jesus invites us to be his neighbor, with his health problem, or his loneliness or his poverty. He lived in a poor, oppressed and forgotten place. If we are not with the poor we do not know what Jesus wants to say to us! We give a new reading of Laudato Si and Misericordiae Vultus (15).

We hear a call to conversion, to renew our concept of Mercy as being witnesses to the love of God. We remember Christ’s words which Br. Charles liked so much: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness,” (2Cor 12.9).

WHAT WE HAVE PREPARED OR STUDIED

We have worked on the upcoming Pan-American Assembly to be held 15-20 February 2016 in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The regions of Québec –Acadie, United States, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, along with a representative of the fraternity which is being formed in Haiti and a brother from Guatemala, are going to meet for the first time outside of the International Assembly. We value very much the work and coordination of Fernando TAPIA, responsible for Chile, who has already gathered almost all of the questionnaires previously prepared by the regions; we thank our Mexican brothers for the welcome that they will give us. Because of government control we are not able to be in contact with the seven brothers in Cuba who along with the Little Brothers of Jesus form a fraternity.

The next Asian Assembly will be in the Philippines in July of 2016. Arthur, responsible for Asia, is working on it with the brothers there. The Month in Asia this past July in Myanmar has made contact possible between many brothers and strengthened the bonds of fraternity among them. There are fraternities like Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia of which we have little news. We have asked Arthur as Responsible that he would contact these brothers.

We dedicated a lot of time to the next International Assembly, from the 15th to 30th of January 2019 in Bangalore, India. We have three years to define objectives, methodology and contents.

A big preoccupation of these days is the health of some of our beloved brothers including Michel PINCHON, Giuseppe COLAVERO, Tony PHILPOT and Howard CALKINS… We are concerned for them and we feel in communion with them in these difficult times. May they not lack our prayer and our love.

Mark has made a summary of the finances of the International Fraternity that he will send to all the Regional Responsibles. We think that it is necessary that all regions contribute 10% of their dues income; this includes those countries with little income. Also some regions in the West could review their criteria for sharing because the needs are so great. “One poor person gives a little, another poor person gives a little… at the end it is much more than the rich person gives.”

The recognition of the statutes of our Priest Fraternity with pontifical approval by the Congregation for the Clergy is good news for the Priestly Fraternity.

We want to remind everyone to use quick and easy means of communication; our website www.iesuscaritas.org is at the service of all the fraternities.

As an international team, as a fraternity of 6 brothers from 4 continents, THANKS to all; thanks for the prayer, for the financial sharing that comes from various countries and brothers, thanks for making a place in your heart and in your house for this work of extending the Kingdom, the Good News, the joy of being Christians and looking upon one another and upon us with the eyes of Jesus.

In Perín, Spain, we have spent each day thinking of you and the realities of your countries, realities that are sometimes hard and difficult; as you are valuing persons, not their capacities, looking into their eyes and not at their sunglasses, valuing their hearts, not their intelligence.

Thank you!

May God, Mary and Brother Charles bless you.

A great hug from your brothers,

Emmanuel, Jean-François, Félix, Mauricio, Mark and Aurelio

Perín, Cartagena, Murcia, Spain, 28 October 2015. Feast of Sts. Simon and Jude

PDF: Letter from Perín inter.team fraternity 28October2015 ENGLISH