On Friday, February 25, 2015, five young Brazilians began their year of postulancy in Campinas, a university city about an hour west of the metropolis of Sao Paulo. The occasion took place during the visit of Fr. Benoit Griere, superior general, from February 18 to March 4. The five postulants all come from Assumptionist parishes in this largest Catholic country in the world, some 130 million.

Assumptionists arrived from Holland and France in the 1930s and established communities in different parts of this vast country. In the 1970s as more and more vocations arrived, the two groups joined forces to form the newly arrived Brazilians and eventually became a single vice-province and then a province.

The Assumptionists serve 5 parishes, a house of formation, and two retreat centers.

Last year two young Congolese Assumptioonist priests arrived both to do missionary work alongside our Brazilian brothers and to prepare themselves for a future foundation in a Portuguese-speaking country in Africa, probably Angola, hopefully in conjunction with the Province of Brazil.

Fr. Benoit surrounded by the postulants, Fr. John Franck, assistant general in charge of South America, Fr. Luiz Carlos de Oliveira, the provincial, and priests who form the formation team for the postulants in Campinas.