Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Apurimac (Agenzia Fides) – In the mid 1960s , Peruvian Bishop of Abancay, Mgr Alcides Mendoza Castro, asked the Order of St Augustine to open a Mission in the Apurimac Department. Having returned from a long pastoral visit in the three provinces of the Department (Antabamba, Grau and Cotabambas), the Bishop was in Rome for the second Vatican Council and in a conversation with the Superior General of the Augustians, Fr Agostino Trapè OSA, he spoke of the difficulties encountered and the shortage of priests (only eight in the whole territory and not one Institute of women religious).
After a preparatory visit the first group of missionaries departed in July, 1968 to reach the newly established Prelature of Chuquibambilla, created a few months earlier by Paul VI. Initially the religious, Apostolic Administrator Fr Lorenzo Miccheli OSA and Vicar General Fr Ettore Salimbeni OSA, settled at Chuquibambilla, but soon new parishes were opened in Cotabambas and Antabamba. In the years that followed missionaries and lay collaborators arrived from Italy and from the bordering Province of Michoacàn (Mexico).
Today the Prelature has a population of about 80,000, 27 parishes and several congregations of women religious (Augustinian Sisters of Divine Love, Daughters of the Crucified One, Oblate Hospital Franciscans Missionaries of Jesus Word and Victim). In the social field works of solidarity developed with the collaboration of Italian Provinces: orphanages and homes for minors from poor families (Cotabambas, Chuquibambilla, Tambobamba), dispensaries and formation centres. The creation of a network of Seminaries helped to promote the growth of the local clergy and the insertion of parishes previously founded and run by religious.
In 1998 a few groups of Augustinian missionaries and lay volunteers from Italy began to collaborate with Operation Mato Gross, present in Totora Oropeza with education and catechesis. In 2006, at Cuzco, there was the inauguration of Lucia Vannucci Maiani Policlinic, the work of the Apurimac Association ONLUS, which offers medical assistance to poor people in the Prelature of Chuquibambilla and the suburbs of Cuzco. (A.M.) (Agenzia Fides 1/7/2009; righe 25, parole 327)
