Category Archives: World Assembly 2025

TO THE BROTHERS OF THE IESUS CARITAS PRIESTLY FRATERNITY AROUND THE WORLD

Dear brothers,

from 6 to 21 May 2025, we gathered at the Mons. Aguirre Retreat House in Buenos Aires, 34 delegates from fraternities in 21 countries in Africa, America, Asia and Europe, under the theme: PRIESTS OF IESUS CARITAS, WITNESSES AND FORGERS OF PRIESTLY AND UNIVERSAL FRATERNITY, to hold the 12th General Assembly of our Fraternity.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank, first of all, our Argentinian brothers for their warm welcome and their readiness in introducing to us the people and culture of their country. We will not forget the cultural evening, the trip to the Delta of Paraná River, the visit to the centre of Buenos Aires and to the shrine of Our Lady of Luján. We would also like to express our gratitude to the various parishes that welcomed us on Sunday 11th with great faith, love and tenderness, to Monsignor Guillermo Caride, Bishop of San Isidro, who visited us, and to the members of our spiritual family who came to share their experiences.

We feel similar gratitude towards our brothers and sisters who enlightened us with their presentations on the reality of the Church in Argentina, the pontificate of Pope Francis, fraternity in the New Testament, in the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, and in the life and apostolate of Saint Charles de Foucauld. These are topics that remain available to the fraternities for their own study and reflection which are published on the website iesuscaritas.org. A special thank you to the outgoing International Team Eric LOZADA, Fernando TAPIA, Honoré SAVADOGO, Tony LLANES and Matthias KEIL for their closeness and service to the brothers during these six years and for the good organisation of this Assembly.

A WOUNDED WORLD

In a world wounded by divisions, polarisations, ambitions for power and the violence of wars, the message on Universal Fraternity is more necessary than ever. Pope Francis understood this. His words and gestures demonstrate it. We therefore, feel a strong call to be witnesses and builders of fraternity both in our presbyteria and in the societies and cultures in which each of us is present, through greater closeness and service to the poor, migrants, the marginalised and victims of all kinds of abuse. We know that they are the ones who suffer most from the lack of fraternity.

FRATERNITY IS POSSIBLE

Fraternity is possible! We have experienced this in this Assembly despite the diversity of languages, cultures and pastoral experiences. Each day has been marked by praying together the Lauds, Adoration and the celebration of Eucharist, which has allowed us to live these days in a climate of attentive listening, understanding, joy, acceptance and dialogue. This is how we have been able to share our personal stories, reflect on the topics presented, listen attentively to the reports presented and work on our Statutes and our Directory.

OUR FRATERNITIES

The reports we have heard have shown us that in several countries in Europe and America our fraternities are ageing. This is not the case in Africa and Asia. We must therefore give more spiritual and financial support to the fraternities on both continents. In the countries of Europe and America, we need to renew our efforts to make Brother Charles de Foucauld known in our presbyteries and invite priests, deacons and seminarians to join our Fraternity. We therefore feel a strong call to found new fraternities and to reawaken those that are dormant.

To do this, we need a great deal of creativity and greater fidelity to the charism of Brother Charles and to the means of spiritual growth that our Fraternity has. Our witness of a simple, fraternal, joyful and committed life with the poor, which springs from our close relationship with the Risen Christ, will always be the best way to attract new members to our fraternities. We are convinced that Brother Charles’ spirituality, centered on the Gospel and the Eucharist, celebrated and adored, is the spirituality that has ongoing relevance.

THE ELECTION OF LEO XIV

During our Assembly, the conclave was held in Rome to elect a new successor to Peter, Pope Leo XIV. Far from distracting us, his election has confirmed us in the path which the Holy Spirit is guiding his Church: a renewed missionary impulse, an ever greater commitment to justice and peace, and a greater participation of all the baptised in the life of the Church. We believe that fraternity is expressed in the synodal way of living our faith and our belonging to the Church, which is why we feel called to promote this ecclesial style in our parishes, Christian communities, movements and other pastoral settings in which we carry out our ministry.

REVISED VERSION OF OUR STATUTES AND DIRECTORY

We have devoted much time during this Assembly for the updating of our statutes and the directory for the development of our fraternities throughout the world. We have made valuable reflections and contributions and have finally approved them. They will be presented to the Dicastery for the Clergy and subsequently disseminated and studied by our brothers in the different countries where we are present. These documents will help us to have a clearer identity and give greater relevance to the witness and writings of Brother Charles.

MEETING OF YOUNG PRIESTS OF OUR FRATERNITY

During our Assembly, we experienced the richness of cultural and pastoral diversity. We would like the young priests of our Association (under 45 years of age) to have a similar experience that will inspire them to follow our beloved Brother and Lord Jesus more closely, in the footsteps of Brother Charles de Foucauld. We entrust the organisation of this meeting to the new international team, with the spiritual and financial support of all our fraternities.

NEW INTERNATIONAL TEAM

During the Assembly, we elected our brother Carlos Roberto DOS SANTOS (Brazil) as the new International Responsible, and he, in turn, formed his team: Roberto (Tino) FERRARI (Argentina), Mark MERTES (USA), Boris SCHLÜSSEL (Switzerland) and Louis Edmond ESSEYI A GNADAM (Cameroon). He has also asked Eric LOZADA (Philippines) to be his delegate for Asia and Yves de MALLMANN (France) to help with the maintenance of the archives. We thank all of them for accepting this service. We offer them our fraternal support and we ask the Lord Jesus to sustain them with his grace and our Lady of Luján to watch over them.

Eric LOZADA
for the delegates to the 12th General Assembly of the IESUS CARITAS Priestly Fraternity.

Buenos Aires, 20 May 2025
document is available at the web iesuscaritas.org

PDF: Letter from Buenos Aires, May 2025 en

Dear Brothers,

Muito Obrigado! Mille Grazie! Merci beaucoup! Muchas gracias! Baie Dankie! Mange Tak! Vielen Dank! Mèsi Anpil! Mile Maith Agat! आपका बहुत धन्यवाद! Dziękuję Bardzo! Grazzi ħafna! Thank you very much!

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is “thank you,” it will be enough.” Meister ECKHART

Coming from a celebration of life after death in remembrance of Jesus and of Pope Francis’ death that has left footprints of his courageous life, in solidarity with the association of the spiritual family of St Charles de Foucauld who is now in a meeting at Tarres, Spain (our brother Matthias Kiel is representing me) and, while waiting with anticipation for the conclave in Rome and for our general assembly in Buenos Aires, I am writing to you this final letter as your servant brother in the Fraternity for the past six years. Six years ago, I could not imagine myself doing this task. I come from a country that is like Nazareth, very small, insignificant, in the periphery of the world. The thought of being the general responsible was both overwhelming and frightening to me at the least. But slowly yet gently, I have learned through the years that this is not about me but about God using me in my poverty and in spite of me. I have wrestled many times praying with Brother Charles the prayer of abandonment while holding the Fraternity in prayer until my heart has mellowed from all my illusions and fears. I could only look back at the 6 years with profound gratitude for all the teaching, humbling and challenging moments that have made me where I am now as a work-in-progress universal brother following Jesus of Nazareth in the footsteps of Brother Charles.

Thank you very much for trusting me and my team with this mandate to serve and animate the fraternities around the world with all our gifts and limitations. Our insecurity to lead has moved us to listen to you – your realities and concerns – through the online survey where we have learned that our fragility as Fraternity urges us to seek one another with firm resolve and not to resign in self-sufficiency where we try to live our lives and ministries like “lone rangers.” Our fragile state has become a new pathway to forging real fraternities where everyone celebrates, challenges, listens and depends on the growth of each other. Above all, thank you very much for your individual witness of life, your courageous fire and zeal for God, the poor and the marginalized, your firm resolve to be a brother to all for the sake of Jesus and the Gospel and your commitment to live the fraternal life as diocesan priests in the footsteps of Brother Charles.

The authentic joy that comes from Jesus’ resurrection sets us all on a humbling yet joy-filled pilgrimage together as spirit-brothers, patiently yet courageously seeking always for what nurtures our hearts amidst the overwhelmingly darkness and confusion of our world, inviting us to listen first before we talk, to understand first before we judge, to preach the Gospel with our lives, to see the face of Jesus in the poor, to heed the cry of Mother Earth and to face life’s challenges with a heart fixed on the coming of the Kingdom in our midst. Like the apostles, seeing an empty tomb with hearts overwhelmed by the confusion, violence and disillusionment of the things that have happened has blinded them from seeing reality with a sense of reflective distance, contemplative wonder and awe. After the resurrection, we are not sent to engage the world like conquerors and little messiahs who disregard the weak in order for the strong to control and dominate. No, we are summoned as lovers, brothers and friends to value every human experience as a place of encounter, to listen to the marginalized, to embrace those who are despised, to challenge the strong, waiting with patience and hope for new life to unfold from the goodness of every human heart and from every human experience.

In this jubilee year, we are invited to hope as pilgrims together. The late Pope Francis, in his October 2013 morning meditation, had given two contrasting icons for hope: the anchor and pangs of childbirth. When we are anchored to “an artificial lagoon we ourselves have made… where everything is comfortable and secure. This is not hope”. Rather, the fitting icon for hope is that of labor at childbirth. The whole of creation “has been groaning together in travail until now; we groan inwardly as we wait. We are waiting.” Waiting for new life to unfold is authentic hope. Hope, then, “is intimately involved in the dynamic of giving life” which often “remains invisible and hidden to human eyes.” Yet we know that the Spirit is at work quietly, gently, patiently. “The Spirit is at work in us. He works like a mustard seed, which is small but full of life and power until it grows into a tree. This is how the Spirit works.”

May the Spirit, the Giver of Life, continue to renew our church and world today in surprising ways and may we have the heart to see it, one experience at a time. His way will always be hidden beneath the drama of our time. We need to be interiorly quiet to see that. This is what our spiritual means of daily adoration, desert day, review of life, daily meditation has prepared us.

Here are some practical details for the delegates of our world assembly:

The organizers are asking us to pay in cash the $675/Euro 625 fee.

That we bring a little gift from our country to be given to the brothers.

That we inform Tino about our flight details for airport pick up to our place of meeting.

Brothers, thank you very much. Kindly hold us close to your heart in prayer while we gather at Buenos Aires for our general assembly. We are gathered with you and for you.

With my fraternal affection,

Eric LOZADA

PDF: LETTER. OF GRATITUDE TO THE BROTHERS. Eric LOZADA 2025

A discovery: brother Charles

One day we read something about Charles de FOUCAULD. Somehow his way of living the Gospel caught our attention. We discovered how his life testimony was truly surprising. Through the books of René VOILLAUME, Carlo CARRETO, Jean-François SIX, or Arturo PAOLI, a line of spirituality and action opened up before us. It could have been the word or the invitation of a colleague to participate in a prayer retreat, a meeting of other priests, or an article in a publication that spoke of a man in love with Jesus, who changed his life from being rich to being poor; a man with a sense of universal brotherhood and full of God, or some little brothers and little sisters, or priests, who followed a style of being Christians from the simple, work, being with the poor above all, men and women incarnated in the reality of their environment. Perhaps when we were students, we were struck by the fact that, among so much theology, there was a direct way of knowing Jesus, from a man who, without being of our time, was ahead of Vatican II and had intuitions that later became reality, in his life and in the lives of many Christians who see this world as a marvelous work of God, where human beings must live in universal brotherhood. We are diocesan priests and called to be the Church, without sectarian traits or those specially chosen for something glorious: called to be universal brothers as well.

The spirituality of Nazareth

Brother Charles perhaps opened a different path in faith for us; not the only one, but the one to which God calls each of us, just as we are, without the frustration of not being another way, better or more perfect. This does not make us above other forms of spirituality, but rather draws us closer to Jesus where he is, in coexistence with those who are close to us, where we live, with those we meet every day. Nazareth is being with people, not living apart from anyone. Nazareth is working like everyone else, or being sick like another sick person, or being retired like so many retired people. It is smiling with those who laugh and crying with those who cry. Without empathy we cannot understand what Nazareth is and understand what simple events or the small things of every day bring us. Sometimes priests find it difficult to live in that style, or to have a pastoral activity without thinking about success. Clericalism is very far from Nazareth, as Nazareth is far from the temple of Jerusalem… That is why we should not feel like failures if few people attend the parish meetings, or if the temple is mostly elderly or has very few believers. To live in Nazareth is to bring Jesus as a neighbour to the neighbourhood, the town, the street, where people gather, in hospitals, prisons, shelters, to share in the hopes of refugees or displaced persons. This can be difficult to understand if we want to preserve our personal security or possible social privileges.

The Month of Nazareth helps us, at least once in our lives, to live in fraternity this spirit of Brother Charles, delving deeper into his life and legacy, sharing our lives and realities by praying together, working on something manual – without playing at being workers for a day -, reviewing our lives, joys and failures, giving the desert its time, as a search and encounter with the silence of God, doing together the tasks of any home, even if in this case it is a home for singles. In the Month of Nazareth we make our commitment to fraternity, which is a commitment to live the gospel and follow Jesus, wherever he puts us.

A delivery to the poorest

Breaking the mold of family and social tradition, Charles de FOUCAULD, after his search for God, chose to be poor like Jesus. When one falls in love, one wants to listen to the other person’s heart. Brother Charles identified himself with his Beloved Jesus by going to the most abandoned.

Florencio ROSELLÓ, archbishop of Pamplona, ​​Spain, says on the World Day of the Poor 2024: “On this Day of the Poor, a doubt always arises in me: when we talk about the poor, who do we think of? Sometimes I see that they are people dependent on my “alms”, people dependent on my attitude, people who are below me, who look up to me, and I look down on them. I feel superior to them, and that bothers me. I have always wanted to treat the poor as equals, to look them in the eye, because I am at the same level as them, not from top to bottom, as if I were the good one and he…think what you want.” Our Pope Francis always insists on this, and, even more, we must touch the poor, shake their hand, or hug them, so that we do not feel disgusted, nor think that we are going to get dirty.

Charles de Foucauld went further: we must be with them, live with them, according to their style, without distinguishing ourselves by our religious status, which is sometimes classist and clerical, even if we are middle class. The poor do not understand university degrees: they understand those who are like them, and they approach them without fear or prejudice. There are many forms of poverty around us, and not only material poverty: poor people who do not have a free heart, poor people who lack friendship, poor people saturated with technology and lacking humanity… We often live among them, and we do not have to go very far. Poor countries with external debt – and eternal – with the West, immigrants in poor conditions: all those rejected by wealth. How can we be coherent in our lifestyle with a world full of injustice? Fraternity also makes us see the poverty of our own miseries.

Sharing faith and life

The life of a priestly fraternity Iesus Caritas is the life of men of faith who follow Jesus and help each other to be faithful to the Gospel. In the monthly meeting – in the local fraternity -, in the annual or quarterly retreat, in the assemblies, and in everyday life, wherever one is, this encounter with Jesus is renewed in adoration, in the time of silence and contemplation of the Eucharist, without rushing. Jesus, who looks at us and welcomes us. Jesus, who listens to us and shares our silence and our noises. In order to have friendship with Jesus, we have to draw close to him. Brother Charles and the great orators throughout history bear witness to this profound friendship with God.

And in the desert, another prolonged period of listening, friendship is strengthened, as is love for the person we miss because he is not at our side. We do not see God, but we feel him, because he is looking for us.

We may be afraid of solitude, or of finding ourselves, our vulnerable reality. In the Prayer of Abandonment we say “with infinite confidence”… When there is confidence, fears go away. For the desert we need practically nothing: only ourselves. We do not need a temple or a chapel, nor books, nor a Bible, nor a pleasant or comfortable landscape: we must go out to where God leads us. Silence…

Fraternity life is sharing life as it is, in every encounter, especially in the review of life. Charles de FOUCAULD did not review his life because he did not have a fraternity of Christians like him. Deepening his friendship with the people with whom he lived, encouraged by the spiritual direction of Father Henry HUVELIN, from a distance between France and Algeria, and before in his various stages of search, Brother Charles had a permanent review of life, in prayer, in his letters, which led him not to be comfortable and settled in pre-made plans: he was always open to the reality of life and circumstances. In fraternity we live the review of life as a means of inner growth, listening and being listened to. Mutual trust is necessary, the acceptance of others, with their way of being, sometimes with different ideas about the Church and society. Dialogue, meeting in a climate of prayer, remove prejudices and judgments towards others. For this reason, for a true review of life, transparency of the interior of each person is essential. We must not review pastoral activities, we must review ourselves. Others will help us. And, above all, we must feel free, without closed doors.

In Jesus’ project

The Iesus Caritas priestly fraternity is a small part of the whole of the Church of Jesus, one more piece of the whole for which Jesus lived: sheep responsible for other sheep who do not look down from power. We feel in communion with Pope Francis, who always has Saint Charles de FOUCAULD present in his encyclicals, and we want to be a Church that goes out, in the peripheries, to continue discovering Jesus and working for his Kingdom, in need of others and at the service of those who are not successful protagonists. Evangelizing by being contemplative and allowing ourselves to be evangelized.

Aurelio SANZ BAEZA,
fraternity of Murcia, Spain

(Thanks, Quico, for the drawings)

📑 Download the document in PDF: Priestly Fraternity Iesus Caritas. Aurelio SANZ BAEZA – en

LETTER OF CONVOCATION FOR THE XII WORLD ASSEMBLY OF IESUS CARITAS FRATERNITY OF PRIESTS
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, MAY 6 to 21, 2025

Dear Brother,

In a world torn apart by wars and wounded by the suffering of the innocent, especially the elderly, women and children, Pope Francis has raised his prophetic voice countless times to remind humanity of an essential truth of the Gospel: “YOU ARE ALL BROTHERS” (Mt 23:8). He has painstakingly carried out significant activities, both inside and outside the Church, with Christians and non-Christians to achieve the longed-for universal brotherhood and world peace.

We, disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, inspired by the testimony of St. Charles de Foucauld, who made UNIVERSAL FRATERNITY the nucleus and horizon of his life in God, want to make a significant contribution to this cause, both within our presbyteries and in the civil society of which we are a part. For this reason, the theme of our Assembly is: PRIESTS OF IESUS CARITAS: WITNESSES AND FORGERS OF PRIESTLY AND UNIVERSAL FRATERNITY.

In the attached annex is the Questionnaire that the National Responsible need to answer with kind attention and the main topics that would set the direction and process of our meeting.

Our Assembly will take place at the Monsignor Aguirre House of Spiritual Exercises, Santa Rosa 2341, B 1644, city of Victoria, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina (the house is one hour from downtown Buenos Aires). It will cost approximately US$600 or Euros 560.

Who are the participants?

According to our Statutes (Art. 19), the following are invited to participate in the Assembly with the right to speak and vote:

1. the International Responsible and his team,
2. the two International Responsibles who preceded him,
3. the four Continental Responsibles and their Teams,
4. the National Responsible of the different countries,

5. some delegates specifically invited by the International Responsible and his team.

To enter Argentina, citizens of some countries require a visa. Click www.migraciones.gov.ar/accesible/indexdnm.php/visas), download the registration form and fill it up. Send a scanned copy of your passport with your address and contact information¹ to Tino (robertoferrarilujan@gmail.com) for the invitation letter. These documents must be processed well in advance so that we could still avail of cheaper airfares. Thank you very much.

Let us hold this Assembly close to our hearts in prayer so that it may bear the fruits that the Spirit has called us to do and be in our times. We humbly entrust the common aspirations and concrete plans of our Assembly through the intercession of our Brother St. Charles de Foucauld.

In Jesus Caritas,
Eric, Matthias, Honoré, Tony and Fernando
International Team.