Following the celebration of the Augustinian Recollect Missionary Synod, the members of the General Secretariat for Ministerial and Missionary Apostolate met at the Sitio Santo Agostinho, in Rio de Janeiro, to assess the path taken and prepare the next steps in the Order’s missionary conversion.
The Sitio Santo Agostinho, which in recent days hosted the Augustinian Recollect Missionary Synod, continues to be a place of work, discernment, and planning for the Order. After the Synod’s closing, the members of the General Secretariat for Ministerial and Missionary Apostolate began a new meeting that will run until October 7.
The meeting is chaired by Fr. Ismael Xuruc, president of the General Secretariat, who resides in Rome at the General Curia. Those taking part include those responsible for the Ministerial Apostolate and the Missionary Apostolate from the Order’s various provinces, among them Fr. Juan Carlos Avitia, Fr. Oscar Carrizales, Fr. Patricio Pamo, Fr. René Villalino, Fr. Ioseph Shonibare, Fr. Paulo Alessandro Moreira Dias, and Fr. Anthony Morillo.
Assessing the Synod and preparing the Final Document
One of the first topics addressed by the Secretariat was an evaluation of the Augustinian Recollect Missionary Synod, held as a significant moment of listening, discernment, and guidance for the Order’s missionary life.
The religious are also working on the process of publishing the Synod’s Final Document, with the aim that it may be known by the entire Augustinian Recollect Family and become a tool for reflection, planning, and action for communities, ministries, parishes, schools, and missions.
Alongside this task, the Secretariat seeks to update the provinces’ missionary action projects, offering a common tool to help each province review, formulate, and put into practice its own paths of mission. The intention is that this work should not remain only a theoretical reflection, but that it may be translated into real, assessable, and shared processes.
A proposal for the whole Order
During the meeting, the members of the Secretariat are also moving forward with drafting a joint project proposal for the Secretariats of Ministerial and Missionary Apostolate. This proposal will be presented to the General Council, which must study it and, where appropriate, approve it.
The horizon of this work is to implement a missionary action project for the entire Order, with an eye to the General Chapter of 2028. The proposal aims to help place communities in a dynamic of missionary conversion, so that they may move from a pastoral ministry focused solely on preservation to an outward-looking pastoral ministry, capable of responding to today’s challenges from the Augustinian Recollect charism.
The meeting thus underscores one of the Synod’s central insights: mission cannot be understood as an isolated activity or reserved for some religious, but as a way of living the Augustinian Recollect vocation in all the places where the Order is present.
Communication, parishes, and synodal accompaniment
In this context, Fr. Alfonso Dávila, the Order’s communications director, presented some digital proposals that the Communications Office is designing to accompany pastoral and missionary life. Among them, he outlined the project for a possible app for parishes, conceived as a tool for evangelization, pastoral management, and communication with communities.
Fr. Alfonso also presented a proposal to accompany the religious who took part in the Augustinian Recollect Missionary Synod, so that the experience lived in Rio de Janeiro may be extended over time and help energize concrete processes in the provinces, communities, and ministries.
With this meeting, the General Secretariat for Ministerial and Missionary Apostolate continues the synodal work and begins to translate its insights into operational proposals. The challenge now is for missionary conversion to become a shared path for the entire Order.
