The Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life has appointed a pontifical assistant for the next three years for The Work of the Church, founded by the Spanish Trinidad Sánchez Moreno in 1959.
According to a note sent to ACI Prensa by La Obra de la Iglesia, this decision has been made after an apostolic visit was carried out between March 2023 and June 2024 “with the desire to have a deeper knowledge of the situation and verify “the progress of the institution in its novelty features with respect to other forms of consecrated life.”
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The visit was entrusted to a priest of the Society of Jesus who has not been identified and who also assumes the role of pontifical assistant of the institution “with the task of assisting the President and his Council” over a three-year period.
The statement also indicates that The Work of the Church has received “different guidelines and suggestions” from the Jesuit religious, emphasizing that, neither in the decree opening the apostolic visit nor in that of its conclusion, “is reference made some to an ‘excessive cult’ of the founder as a central theme.”
As detailed, the initial decree, dated March 2023, referred to the article 123 of the Apostolic Constitution Preach the Gospel by which Pope Francis reformed the Roman Curia in the year 2022.
The decree states that “there is particular care for those entities that have emerged with such new characteristics that they do not fall within the forms of consecrated life recognized by the Code of Canon Law, so that they progress in the following of Christ proposed by the Gospel, according to their own charism and faithfully seek their goals, contributing effectively to the building of the Church and its mission in the world.”
What is The Work of the Church?
As specified on the La Obra de la Iglesia website, this institution was founded on March 18, 1959, Trinidad Sánchez Moreno, later known as Mother Trinidad of the Holy Mother Church.
In 1967, the Archbishop of Madrid-Alcalá, Mons. Casimiro Morcillo erected it in Pía Unión. In 1990, his successor, Cardinal Ángel Suquía, approved the Constitutions of The Work of the Church.
Seven years later, the Holy See approved this institution, declaring it to be of pontifical right, without framing it “in any of the canonical forms of the Institutes of consecrated life, given its uniqueness.”
The Work of the Church is composed of three branches of consecrated life: priestly, lay, male, and female. Among its members are distinguished various types of membership: responsible, adherents, militants, collaborators and sympathetic collaborators.
This institution of pontifical right is stable in Spain, Italy, Equatorial Guinea and Ecuador, although it carries out apostolic missions in other European countries (Switzerland, Germany, Serbia); Africa (Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola); Asia (India); America (Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, United States).
One of his most unique contributions to the life of the Catholic Church is the welcome and help to bishops from all over the world when they come to Rome on a visit. at the threshold of the apostles.
Mother Trinity passed away in Rome on July 28, 2021.
Nicholas de Cardenas
Born in 1980, I am a Spanish husband and father and journalist with more than 20 years of experience in print and digital media, specializing in sociopolitical and religious information. I have worked for more than 10 years in defense of human rights and have accreditations in Journalism and Comprehensive Communication. Since July 2022, I have been a correspondent for ACI Prensa and EWTN Noticias in Spain, covering international events of the Catholic Church.