Learning about Peru

On Sunday, I spent the day with Jessica's friend Lorena (27), who is a member of the Marian Community of the Reconciliation - called Fraternas. Originally founded (their male branch) by Luis Fernando Figari (who is still alive) in Peru, the Fraternas are a community of consecrated laywomen that assume committments of obedience, celibacy, and detachment from temporal goods in order to be fully available for apostolate. Fraternas do not where habits and, for the most part, have normal jobs (although they are Church-related), which allows them to fully commit themselves to being "in the trenches", so to speak, serving those in need. The four main areas in which the Fraternas work are promotion of the family, youth ministry, outreach to the needy, and evangelization of the culture, which basically encompasses the first three. There are four Fraternas that live in a community in Stanmore, a suburb of Sydney. Three of them run the Catholic chaplaincy at the University of New South Wales, and Lorena does a whole bunch of different things related to youth ministry.

I met Lorena in Stanmore, and she showed me her house, which is an bright, airy old presbytry, tastefully decorated by the young Fraternas who live there. She told me a bit about their community and about growing up in Lima, Peru. The most interesting thing that Lorena told me about Peru was the pervasiveness of Catholicism in Peruvian culture. She said that most people are at least nominally Catholic, and even those that aren't have a pretty decent familiarity with the faith. An example: almost all Peruvian artwork is religious, and even overtly Catholic, even if the artists themselves are not. At a street market in Lima, she said, you are just as likely to find sculptures of the Blessed Mother and crucifixes as you are to find paintings of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

We took the train back into the city and went to noon Mass at St. Patrick's, which is the first Catholic Church in Sydney. Lorena said that the story goes that St. Patrick's was first a house where the Blessed Sacrament was kept hidden to avoid anti-Catholic persecution; the church was only built later. St. Patrick's is the near a big train station, and they have Mass literally every hour on Sunday's, so the small church gets a lot of worshippers. Honestly, you can't get to Mass early because you'll find yourself in the end of the one before.

Afterwards, we ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant at Darling Harbour one of the popular touristy areas of Sydney. It was a beautiful afternoon! During lunch, Lorena told be the story of her journey from her childhood as a non-practicing Catholic to life as a consecrated woman. It was a story of pestering from friends to get involved in a youth group, a few providential experiences and conversations, and an eventual realization that she was so sure of God's call that she no longer had anything to fear from making such a big jump as entering consecrated life.

Lorena eventually had to return to Stanmore for various community activities, but I stayed in the city for a little while longer on my own to explore the historic Queen Victoria Building, an ornate indoor mall filled with some of Sydney's most upscale shops. It was quite an enjoyable window shopping experience, and ended with a very fun trip to Victoria's basement, which was literally overflowing with cheaply priced home goods. They had some great stuff; if only I hadn't been 11,000 miles away from home!