Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Palmira (Agenzia Fides) – The presence of Conventual Franciscans in Venezuela dates to 1978, when the first three missionaries left Italy and arrived in Guanare. From the early years the missionaries helped with pastoral activity in the parish of San José Obrero and with initiatives of assistance mainly for homeless people and slum dwellers on the outskirts of the great cities. The Bishop of Caracas suggested they should start this work at the Lidice-Manicomio slum where a parish school was opened and then in 1991 the parish of San José responded to the vertiginous increase of poor people opening a Home and Centre for basic medical care.
Work started with few resources on building land and a first group of slum dwellers, borrachitos, were welcomed thanks to the work of the missionaries, today assisted by volunteers of the Secular Order of St Francis (OFS). Project Alejandro, also run by OFS volunteers, helps street children from La Importancia slum who abandon school to live on the streets possible victims of all kinds of crime (steeling, drugs, prostitution). The implantatio Ordinis produced a rapid vocational response. Today the heart of the mission is Palmira, a town about 10 km from S. Cristobal, the site of the diocesan seminary and the seminary of St Joseph Cupertine, opened to meet the desire of many young Venezuelans to share the Franciscan ideal.
Founded in 1989, St Joseph's Seminary has today 11 postulants and 9 professed brothers already inserted in three parish communities. Equally fecund is the presence of the Franciscan family. In 1983 Poor Clare Sisters founded Santa Clara Convent at Guanare (today with about 20 local women religious) and the Militia of Immaculate Mary, first started in the seminary at Palmira has been active since the 1990s. Active in the apostolate of the press, the community publishes the Caballero de la Inmaculada, a bulletin with a circulation of 15,000 copies distributed regularly to Franciscan centres all over Venezuela. (A.M.) (Agenzia Fides 2/7/2009; righe 24, parole 315)
