The In Imum Cordis School concluded the in-person meeting of the International Master’s in Psycho-Spiritual Accompaniment in Mexico City, with participants from eight Latin American countries.
The In Imum Cordis School, of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, held the in-person meeting of the International Master’s in Psycho-Spiritual Accompaniment in Mexico City, a key stage within the formative process that seeks to prepare companions for the evangelizing service of the Church from the Augustinian Recollect charism.
The meeting took place from September 7 to 27, 2026 at the Lumen Gentium Catholic University, in the Tlalpan Centro neighborhood of Mexico City, and brought together participants from Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Mexico. For three weeks, students worked individually and in groups on essential aspects previously studied in the Master’s online modules.
A Master’s for Accompaniment from Interiority
The program, known as IMSA, is an international specialization course aimed at training those who accompany the integral growth of believers in the Church. The proposal spans two years and is directed at religious, priests, and lay people interested in responding to the challenges of spiritual, formative, and vocational accompaniment.
The formation provided by In Imum Cordis is not limited to offering pastoral tools. Its objective is to integrate the human, psychological, affective, relational, and spiritual dimensions of the person who accompanies. Therefore, the Master’s itinerary insists that one cannot accompany the depth of another’s heart without also working on the companion’s own interiority.
From this perspective, the Master’s has a clear Augustinian identity: to learn to love and allow oneself to be loved, to walk in an authentic experience of God, and to accompany “from heart to heart,” from interiority, community, and ecclesiality.
A Path for Spiritual Accompaniment
In the last in-person workshop, a concrete path for spiritual accompaniment was proposed, with a sequence of steps that helps establish the starting point of each process. Participants worked with case vignettes to identify the psycho-spiritual root of suffering and distinguish it from what the person initially believes causes their pain.
The workshop also offered biblical resources and exercises in deep introspection and prayer. Friar Héctor helped participants understand that spiritual accompaniment must lead to an essential truth: the human being is a creature, not the center of the universe, and cannot control everything, understand everything, or retain everything.
From this perspective, existential anguish only finds an answer when the person learns to live with transcendent meaning and to embrace life as a gratuitous gift from God. Psycho-spiritual accompaniment thus becomes a path towards inner freedom, acceptance of one’s own history, and openness to grace.
“A Gift to the Church from Our Charism”
For Friar Francisco Javier Monroy Rodríguez, director of the In Imum Cordis School, the graduation of this second generation of the Master’s is “a source of great satisfaction,” because it confirms the consolidation of a formative project that already has a trajectory and has spread throughout Latin America.
“Participation has stabilized, it has spread well throughout Latin America, and we have managed to organize the content and methods for training people who provide integral accompaniment,” explained Friar Francisco Javier. According to the director, the Master’s seeks to integrate “psychology, humanity, and spirituality into a single way of accompanying in the Church.”
The formative proposal includes online study, in-person meetings, personal psychotherapy, supervised accompaniment practices, and the development of a final thesis. These elements seek to ensure that the companion not only acquires knowledge but also experiences a real process of personal, spiritual, and pastoral maturation.
Friar Francisco Javier emphasized that the graduation of this generation confirms that the Augustinian Recollects can offer this service as “a gift to the Church.” “It is an evangelizing service,” he affirmed, highlighting that psycho-spiritual accompaniment, lived from the Augustinian Recollect charism, still has “much road ahead” to continue helping the Church train companions capable of listening, discerning, and walking with others.
The In Imum Cordis School, according to its own institutional presentation, offers online and in-person training for leaders and companions for evangelizing service in the Church, with special attention to formators, pastoral agents, ecclesial leaders, and members of the Augustinian Recollect Family.
