The first Brazilian cloistered Augustinian Recollect nun, Sister Aurilene da Mota Silva, made her solemn profession on May 12. Most Rev. Francisco Javier Hernández Arnedo, OAR, bishop of Tiangua, presided at the ceremony, accompanied by several concelebrating priests. Sister Aurilene was born in one of the parishes of the diocese.

Thus a new chapter is completed in the history of Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery, founded in mid-June 2003 by Augustinian Recollect nuns from Ahuacatlán (San Luis Potosí), Mexico. They had come to Brazil in generous response to a call from Bishop Hernández, who was determined at all costs to have in his diocese a religious community dedicated to prayer. The Monastery of Guaraciaba continues to be the only contemplative monastery in Tianguá and the only monastery of Augustinian Recollect nuns in South America.

Six Brizilian Nuns in Initial Formation

The solemn profession of Sister Aurilene is the first ripened fruit produced by the Brazilian monastery. Following her are six other Brazilian young women in initial formation and another candidate who has not yet entered the community, all desiring to live the Augustinian Recollect contemplative life.

And it is also one more stone firmly cemented into the building of a new feminine branch of the Recollection. For centuries, since their foundation in 1603 and until recent times, cloistered Recollect monasteries were found only in Spain and in Mexico. In 1989 the nuns in Mexico crossed the border and founded a convent in Irvington, New Jersey, USA. In 1992 the nuns in Spain launched out to the Philippines and founded in Bacolod. Later came the convent in Guaraciaba (2003) and then those in Africa, in Wote, Kenya, in the South in 2008 and later the one in Lodwar in the Northeast in 2011. The latter two monasteries have abundant vocations, a fact that indicates that the feminine branch of the Recollection is taking on a new look.