Today, 125 years after its foundation, the female religious congregation of the Franciscans of the Immaculate Conception has the most vocations of any religious order in Peru, with 30 houses and 37 other institutions, including schools, homes for the elderly and day care centers.
These sisters, also present in Colombia and Italy, now number a total of 556 consecrated religious. Those with an evangelising, apostolic and fraternal spirit are teaching the world the love of God, and, with their religious habit, their very presence in the streets is a living testimony to Christ and an open invitation to others to draw close to the Church.
The Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (Hermanas Franciscanas de la Inmaculada Concepción ) were blessed this year with 30 aspirants, of who only 18 were chosen to become postulants after a process of discernment and evaluation by their spiritual formators. The aspirants are given a period of two months in which to decide on their vocation.
During this time they are accompanied, and also observed and evaluated, by psychologists, priests and the sisters who are their spiritual directors and formators. These provide them with guidance and correction so that they can learn what they need to know in order to live together on a daily basis. If they do not seem suitable, they are advised to return home.
"A vocation is a free choice, not something imposed," says Hermana María Adelaida, the Superior General of the congregation, in an interview with Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). She added that sometimes the young women see the religious life as a means of escaping from their poverty, gaining an education and improving their social status, and not as a genuine service to God. Hence the great importance of the process of discernment, interviewing and careful selection of the postulants.
All the sisters are given a university standard education. The great majority of them study teaching, although there are some who study administration and others law, while this year one sister embarked on the study of architecture. "We respect their particular qualities, so that they can be happy in what they are doing and contribute to the community with their own particular gifts," commented Sister Adelaida.
The fact that they are professionals also helps the sisters to fund their own formation, since they receive a salary from the state when they teach in state-run schools. The contributions made by these sisters are still not sufficient to cover all the costs of their formation, however, especially since at present there are no fewer than 98 sisters undergoing formation – 18 postulants, 25 novices and 55 juniors.
In 2005, the external support they had been receiving came to an end. But one year later they came across ACN, which is today the only charitable organization supporting the studies of these religious. "As a female religious congregation, we believe that these courses are a gift of God. We are gaining not only an education but above all a formation," the Superior General told ACN.
For the current year ACN has given $42,200 to cover the cost of three courses for 300 formators and superiors and other religious sisters in Peru. The Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception are immensely grateful for the aid given by ACN for these courses, which they see as fundamental. The courses enable them to revive a sense of day to day holiness and stress the importance of having a personal goal and using this goal to mould the spirit through discipline in order to attain it. The courses also teach the importance of ascesis, of renouncing some things in order to grow and develop in the search for a higher good.
At the heart of the formation they receive there has been, according to Sister Adelaida, "a real springtime of the religious life. We are starting to witness a new burgeoning and flourishing of vocations."
