The blood of
love ,
The martyrs of Algeria 1994-1996
A Family without Frontiers:
At the heart of the World, at the heart of the Church
4,200 Brothers, from all continents, present in 76 countries.
Working as Christian educators
for the children and youth
to make out of them men and Christ’s disciples.
A religious family that opens its spirituality,
its charism and its mission
to all Christians who want to live
and collaborate with the Brothers.
Guided by the pedagogical principles
of Marcellin Champagnat :
–
To educate well one must love!
– To educate well, one must train the whole person:
the citizen and the Christian!
– To educate well one must live with the young ones!
– To educate well one must offer
God’s paternal and maternal tenderness.
– To educate well one must allow himself to be inspired
by Mary, Christ’s Mother and Educator.
– To educate well, one must open his heart
to children and youth in difficulty.
Marcellin Champagnat’s Spirituality
We go to the young ones
because we ourselves are loved by Jesus:
We go to the young ones with our eyes turned to Mary,
the Good Mother: “Our apostolic action is
a participation in her spiritual maternity.” (Const. 84)
Our motto is:
“All to Jesus through Mary,all to Mary for Jesus.”
With Marcellin’s ambition:
“All the dioceses of the world attract us.”
Saint Marcellin Champagnat (1789-1840)
The Founder of the Marist Brothers and a true father to them
A heart that knew no bounds,
A man of faith and action,
A born educator and a trainer of educators,
A man of relationships and communion,
A man of God and a Marial apostle,
A humble, simple, discreet and happy man.
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THE LITTLE SISTERS
OF THE ASSUMPTION
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To procure the glory of God by the
salvation of the poor and the little ones
“In Jesus Christ, life and mission make only one.””
Our mission takes us into popular neighbourhoods, towards the
excluded, those without a voice, the ‘displaced’, attentive to
the causes
of family disintegration, particularly with young people and
women in difficulty. Our activities take on the colour of the country
where the congregation is implanted; everywhere there is humble
work, presence and action. “May your actions speak of Jesus Christ!”
our Founder used to say. It is thus ‘in the actions of daily life that
we
want to manifest the love of the Father to others.’
We encourage the places of dialogue, all sorts of meetings in our suburbs
or at work, seeking to put people in contact with each other and
to foster communities of faith. It’s our way of being participants
in
society and in the Church.
Consecrated to the Lord, we put in common all that we are, all that
we have. Through that we give our life to Christ. In fraternal apostolic
community, we come together around the Word of God and, sure
of his love, we seek to spread the joy that he gives us. Mary, in her
Assumption, strengthens our hope.
Our congregation was founded in 1865 in France by Father Etienne
Pernet, Assumptionist, and Antoinette Fage. The former used to say
to us: “You will go everywhere because everywhere there are sick
people, poor people and souls to save… “
“France is your crib but the entire universe is open to you.”
There are currently 994 sisters, present in 24 countries and 5 continents.
“There is great happiness in living the life of Jesus
Christ
and in becoming other Jesus Christs.” (E.Pernet)
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THE AUGUSTINIAN
MISSIONARY SISTERS
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We are a small universal family of 500 sisters, spread out over four
continents and present in sixteen countries.
Our charism in the Church is the search for God, fraternal life, the
service of young people, especially the least favoured by education,
intelligence or of the heart.
We share our charism with laypeople who come to live our spirituality
and our mission.
Spirituality
We live the spirituality of Saint Augustine: the search for God, life
in
fraternity and the service to the Church. This spirituality includes
– The contemplative dimension that makes us experience God as
the interior Master and we discover how he has been acting in the
history of mankind and of the world.
– The availability to go where apostolic needs call us.
– Love for the Church and the centrality of Jesus in life.
– Love for the Virgin Mary, invoked under the titles of Mother of
Good Counsel and Our Lady of Consolation.
Founders
Our Congregation was founded on the 6th May 1890 by three
contemplative Augustinian sisters: Sisters Querubina Samarra,
Mónica Mujal and Clara Cantó.
The urgent reason for the foundation was an epidemic of cholera in
the Philippines which had left a lot of orphans. We care especially for
the needs of abandoned children.
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THE MISSIONARIES
OF AFRICA (WHITE FATHERS)
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A missionary Institute founded in Algeria with
a passion for Africa.
Formed by 1770 brothers and priests of Africa, America, Asia
and Europe.
640 are in Africa in the service of the local churches:
parishes, institutions of formation and animation.
A constant commitment: the first evangelisation.
An important presence in the more Islamic African countries.
Commitments for justice, peace, reconciliation and inter-religious dialogue:
heritage of the founder.
A life in international communities, founded on sharing and mutual help.
Attitudes of an apostle according to the founder
“Be apostles, be only that or at least be nothing but that in this
aim.”
To be all to all “by language first, by clothing, by food”: a
first step towards inculturation.
To Christianise Africa, not to Europeanise it: importance of tolerance and
respect for others.
“Visum pro martyrio”: “ it is, in effect, my well beloved
Sons, the trial that waits you all.”
Cardinal Charles Lavigerie (1825-1892)
Founder of the Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers) and the White Sisters.
Archbishop of Algiers, of Carthage and Primate of Africa.
A zeal to knock down barriers.
A battle: to defend the rights and the liberty of people.
A concern: to reconcile the Church with its time and to prepare the future.
A stern voice, a heart of gold and an extraordinary capacity to be interested
in everyone.
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THE SISTERS OF OUR
LADY OF THE APOSTLES
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A religious family that is exclusively missionary, founded in Lyon in
1876 by Father Augustin Planque (1826 – 1907) who, by his faith
and audacity, shared his passion with us:
“To know and love God to make
him known and loved.”
There are 800 Sisters, of 21 nationalities living in 19 countries.
We live in international communities, a sign of the universality of
the Church.
As Mary at the Cenacle
with the Twelve, we persevere in prayer
and with the audacity of the apostles we commit ourselves to the
service of God’s Kingdom in the world.
Sent beyond borders,
we audaciously proclaim the dead and
resurrected Christ to a pluricultural world.
We work at evangelisation,
particularly in Africa. In an attitude
of simplicity and respect… we collaborate in the inculturation of
the Gospel.
We live an effective
solidarity with the poor, especially with
women and the marginalised of our contemporary society.
Attentive to the
missionary dimension of the local Church, we collaborate
in social, religious, educational and health activities …
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THE LITTLE SISTERS
OF THE SACRED HEART
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A small religious family following in the footsteps of Charles de
Foucauld, present in France, Spain, Algeria, Tunisia, Mali and Bolivia
Mission
Prayer is our first commitment for our brothers and sisters
and for the world, in a life of sharing and of closeness with
those who are least favoured, far from the Church.
To be a place of dialogue between people and different cultures
in a fraternal community life.
Way of Life
To live in small fraternities with those who are in a precarious position.
To make our relationship with God in times of prayer and in
our fraternal relationships legible and accessible to all.
Blessed
Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916)
An orphan with a Christian education, he sought the meaning of his life
during his adolescence and his youth.
In Algeria, faith and Moslem prayer awoke in him the concern of God; he
converted at the age of 28.
“He made religion a love”. He entered a Trappist monastery,
then he went to Nazareth and finally in the Algerian
Sahara where he was murdered on the 1st December 1916.
The Trappists are contemplative monks. Their way of life is coenobitic,
in a stable community, which is the school of fraternal
charity. They follow the great Benedictine tradition, reinterpreted
by the Cistercian founders of the XIth century who rediscovered
the value of manual work, with a balance between liturgy and the
lectio divina, personal prayer and necessary work for living
without depending on anybody. The life is lived in a climate of
solitude and silence, with a certain austerity, radicalised in the
XVIIth century by the Trappist reform (De Rancé). Today that is
expressed especially by a kind of robust, sober life that tends
towards the experience of the living God.
A characteristic of the order is the link between the different houses,
autonomous, but united among them by the Chart of charity,
with the obligation of reciprocal help, material as well as spiritual.
Saint Bernard de Clairvaux ,
the
most well known saint of the Order, described the
Cistercian life in this way:
“Our order is renunciation, humility, poverty,
obedience, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Our order is living under a master, under an
abbot, under a rule, under a discipline.
Our order is to apply ourselves to silence, to fast, to keep vigil, to
pray, to work manually and especially to follow the way that is still
more excellent which is that of charity; then, in all these
things, to progress day by day and to persevere in it until the
final day.”
(Letter 142)
There are 171 Trappist monasteries, present in 46 countries
on 5
continents, with close to 2100 monks and 1700 nuns.
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THE DOMINICANS OR
THE ORDER OF PREACHERS
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The joy of living and announcing
the Gospel.
The Dominicans were founded by Saint Dominic in 1215.
Today, there are more than 6,000 present in all the continents.
The contemplative nuns and many male or female religious
institutes who are inspired by their spirituality, and the
laity who share in their charism and mission are more and
more numerous. They form the Dominican family.
The
Dominicans are characterised by contemplation, study
and the preaching of the Word of God: “Our zeal is founded
on our passion for opening men to ways of life, truth
and freedom, by the word. From the origin, the vocation
of the Order of Preachers has been to “work for the salvation
of souls” by the proclamation of the Gospel.
Saint Peter of Verona, Saint Raymond de Peñafort – in
the XIIIth century founder of a study centre for Arabic in
North Africa, Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Blessed Fra
Angelico were Dominicans.
