Santa María de los Andes holds 6th provincial chapter
The sixth Chapter of the Santa María de los Andes province took place from Dec. 1 – 3 in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, with nearly 60 participants.
Participants included 29 capitular brothers; two Brothers of the General Council, Brother Luis Carlos Gutiérrez, vicar general, and Brother Benjamin Consigli; Brother Alberto Aparicio, Cruz del Sur provincial and coordinator of the América Sur region; eight brothers in the consultative part of the Chapter and 16 lay people in the mission councils or commission coordinators.
Brothers Pablo González, Patricio Pino, Pedro Herreros, Pedro Marcos, and Juan Manuel García were elected to form the new provincial council. Brother Saturnino Alonso Ortega, who was elected provincial in 2014, took up office for another three years.
The three main guidelines that the Chapter proposed for the triennium are:
1. On the evangelization of boys, girls and adolescents: We evangelize by educating children and adolescents, in light of the Marist model of evangelization, with emphasis on protagonist participation, the focus on rights, inclusion, solidarity, critical awareness, ecological vision, vocational culture, presence and social justice with initiatives that respond to emerging needs.
2. On formation of accompaniment of brothers and lay people: Lay people and brothers creatively assume our specific and common vocation, in all stages of life. For this we prioritize through a plan, the vocational promotion of brothers and lay people; we continue to promote vocational processes and itineraries of formation and mutual accompaniment in the Marist charism and commitments; we foster the formation of new communities and fraternities, and take care of existing ones; we promote charismatic leadership, to guarantee the vitality of the Marist charism.
3. About structures and province: We move towards greater provincial integration from local realities, through flexible, participatory and humanizing structures that facilitate the development of people, the accompaniment of processes and the achievement of provincial objectives.
