Help for the Training of Religious Sisters in Brazil
Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Success Story

The community of the Handmaids of the Lord and the Blessed Virgin of Matará is still young. Founded in Argentina in 1989, today, just 24 years later, the congregation has more than 1,000 Sisters serving in more than 30 countries and on five continents. Their still growing numbers of vocations receive their training in 26 different formation houses.

These Sisters are active in Brazil as well. Their vocation includes doing what Pope Francis has again and again urged the faithful to do, namely to go into the "marginal areas of the world." They fulfill their apostolate above all in those places where people live in dire poverty, in the remote and neglected areas of the country. They ask, and receive, nothing for their service of love and sacrifice, which is offered to God alone. They care for orphans and the elderly, work in the schools and hospitals, help families and support the priests in the parishes. Their work is accompanied and sustained by the prayer of the contemplatives of the congregation, whose Sisters devote themselves entirely to prayer. They pray for peace in the world, for unity among Christians, for priests and religious, for the protection of life in the midst of a "culture of death," as Pope John Paul II described it, and for the spiritual support of the work of their active Sisters.

More and more young Brazilian women are feeling the call to join the community. At the present time, there are 12 novices training in the formation house in Brazil. Since the congregation has only slender financial resources, ACN regularly supports the formation of these new vocations. This year, for example, we have helped again with a contribution of $4,500. Thank you to all our benefactors for making this possible. We are sure the Sisters will also gratefully remember you in their prayers.

Aid to the Church in Need commits to invest your funds where they will have the greatest impact for the Church that we serve. Funds donated to Aid to the Church in Need’s projects will be used towards the greatest need in our programs to help keep the Faith alive.

Code: 212-05-79