This office was signed according what was stipulated by the general chapter, which recommends that the interprovincial novitiates be established and the power to designate o the members of the formation team is reserved to the Prior General.
The prior general gave the names of the four chosen members of the team, which is headed by the prior of the community, Oscar Martinez Sanchez. He as well as the other members of the team are from Colombia; the fourth is from Brazil.
The office reminds as well that the novitiate year should mark the existence of the novices and for which asked the formators to give them “testimony of communion” and to offer them “an integral formation and a personal and communitarian accompaniment”. He concluded commending them to elaborate a program for the novitiate in which they should send a copy to the prior general.
Start of school year
A day after the publication of the office, on January 3, 10 immediately started novitiate: six of them are Colombians and four Brasilians. In the opening mass he reminded these ten young men, already admitted as novices, participated in the Holy Mass already vested in their Augustinian recollect habit, and that this will be turned into their daily clothing for the entire year.
Albeiro Arenas presided the Mass, prior of the province of our Lady of Candelaria, which compasses Colombia and Chile, and with him concelebrated several other religious. Also participating, accompanying the novices coming from Brasil, a religious representing the province of St. Rita de Casia, which comprises some parts of the states in the south of Brasil.
El Desierto de la Candelaria (Colombia)
The convent and sanctuary of El Desierto de la Candelaria is located in Require (Boyaca). In this isolated place emerged, in 1603, the american Recollection, whir later on was incorporated to the Spanish recollection, born in Talavera de la Reina (Toledo) some years before, in 1588. With regards to El Desierto, by its conditions, is a place very appropriate to realize the intense experience of consecrated life which is the novitiate. In the words ofcanon law, this experience should last for exactly a year and concludes with the temporal profession of the three religious vows: chastity, poverty and obedience.