The Mercedarian Order was established in the 13th century. The order has a fourth vow, in addition to the traditional three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, namely the ransoming of Christian slaves – even at the cost of their own liberty and their own lives. Their history goes back to the year 1218, when Our Lady appeared to Pedro Nolasco, subsequently the founder of the order, and asked him to work for the liberation of Christians who had been enslaved by the Moors. Accordingly, their full title is the Order of Our Lady of Mercy for the Liberation of Captives (in Latin: „Maria de mercede redemptionis captivorum“. In Spanish it is «Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes“. The order has around 30,000 members today and is particularly active in Latin America. The male branch is active among other things in the prison ministry.
The female branch of the order is associated with the same fourth vow via a commitment to a life of penance and contemplative prayer before God, including among other things that those imprisoned might not lose their faith.
In La Ceja, in the Colombian diocese of Sonson-Rionegro, a new Mercedarian convent was founded in 2008 by sisters from Mexico. Since then it has been blessed with new Colombian vocations and now has 12 fully professed sisters and one aspirant, while a number of other young women would also like to join the convent.
But the convent needs more space in order to be able to accommodate new vocations. At present the sisters are living two to a cell, and there is still not enough space. So now we are proposing to help them to complete the upper floor of their new convent so that they can provide additional cells and thus more space for new vocations – and at the same time enable all the sisters to live singly, each in her own cell, as originally intended, so that they can truly live their vocation of perpetual prayer and silence. We are planning to give 40,000 Euros. Can you help us?