Chronicle 5 of the General Team’s visit to the Province of Europe

General Team | Province of Europe

Between February and April 2025, Sisters María José Meira (Dedé) and Fatima Borges travel on behalf of the General Team to a part of the Province of Europe.

Below we share the fifth chronicle of their trip, between April 4 and 14, 2025, during which they visited the communities of Levante: Vinalesa, Valencia, Alcoy, La Unión and Puerto Sagunto.

Vinalesa

Here is a community fully organized to welcome and accompany elderly and/or sick Sisters at St. Joaquina House. Two sisters and a lay nurse make up the coordination team. All the activities of the house are directly related to this objective; one sister of the community also participates in the parish council of Vinalesa.

We also visited the Vedruna School of Vinalesa: it has 314 students, aged between 3 and 16 years, of which 160 eat at the school. There we met the management team of the Vedruna School of Vinalesa: Pilar, director; Isabel, studies coordinator; Amparo, primary school coordinator; María Teresa, ESO coordinator; Germán, head teacher and Begoña, responsible for pastoral care. Being a small village school, they live a calm reality, although, on the other hand, they face the daily challenge of the exhausting bureaucracy demanded by the State.

In the school they develop several projects of great value:

The twice-weekly meetings and activities of the children of the 4th year of ESO with the older sisters of Casa Santa Joaquina, during which precious bonds are created.
The solidarity project with the social work of Simalwara, of the Vedruna Province of India.
The sponsorship project from 4th grade to the youngest, which consists of a close accompaniment of the elders to the youngest, generating bonds and, at the same time, a responsibility on the part of the elders to help the youngest.

Valencia

Salvador Giner Community – Jérica

This is a unique community with two insertion presences in popular environments, one urban in Valencia, in Salvador Giner street; and another rural in Jérica. The 7 sisters participate in various social and Christian community projects, especially with women, children and migrants. Some sisters also participate in the choir of the parish of Jérica.

In Salvador Giner, they are involved in the Espai Obert Center, where they develop a project of intervention, inclusion and social cohesion through a space for training, coexistence, participation, and accompaniment in personal development and migration and learning process. Also in El Bastidor de Olivawhere we had communities for many years, which is a center for educational, social and labor action. This project is aimed at children and young people between six and seventeen years of age, of low economic level, with problems of school performance and integration.

In Jérica, the rural presence, the sisters are dedicated to being neighbors and volunteering from Cáritas in:

Meeting Space in the Caritas House.
Training for women’s groups.
Shelter and accompaniment of people in vulnerable situations.
Accompaniment of lonely and sick people at home and in nursing homes.

Conde de Trénor Community

In a house in the center of Valencia, next to the Vedruna Sacred Heart School, is located this community of ten sisters, all of them elderly, but still with mobility possibilities. In addition to mutual care and accompaniment, they are also present in various activities that they can perform: such as volunteering or service in the Conference of Religious of Valencia, among others.

Benimamet Community

This is a community of insertion in a peripheral region of Valencia, composed of five sisters. They are a presence of closeness and commitment to the people of the neighborhood and the Christian community. It highlights the Lloc de Vida – Buscando alternativas, an association where:

we have gathered a group of people because we think that we are all equal and we are still far from achieving it. Where we want to put a grain of sand in a world with more justice and freedom. Where we believe that education and culture make us better every day. .

Alcoy

Here the community of sisters is composed of two older sisters who are a living and active presence in the local reality. They give Spanish classes to migrant women; they welcome at home women with children, who are guided by a network, for a period that helps them to find a better situation for their lives and their children. Being only two sisters, they are linked to the Conde Trenor Community.

They also collaborate with the Novaterra Foundationdedicated to accompanying people who have encountered multiple adversities in life, and who need to get and keep a job to get back on their feet and live with dignity. We shared with 3 women from the Novaterra Foundation’s coordination team at the Alcoy branch.

Alcoy is also home to the Vedruna La Presentación School, which we visited and where we met two lay members of the management team, several teachers and students.

In addition, in Alcoy there is also an important community of Vedruna Lay Associates: they walk together with the sisters, living the mission in community, with co-responsibility, listening and discernment to meet needs and share resources. Although each person is in a different context, all are called to make Jesus present among the most vulnerable. From there they assume various commitments in their environment, each one from their own possibilities.

The Union

Here also there is a joint journey between the community of four sisters and the Vedruna Laity, who develop together various activities in the ecclesial and social field. They live with illusion and responsibility to be Vedruna Family, walking together – sisters and laity – in a common project of life and mission. The general objective of the Community Project is to be a community of people brought together by Jesus of Nazareth, who want to live the Good News in the style of Joaquina de Vedruna.

We were also able to visit Cartagena, where we had a community of Sisters for many years and now the Vedruna School remains.

Puerto Sagunto

In this place, the community of three sisters is a presence in this peripheral neighborhood of Sagunto and they also act in the pastoral care of the parish. We met the parish priest of the neighborhood, a young Colombian priest.

Meeting of Levantine Communities

On April 12, more than 50 sisters from communities throughout the Levante region gathered at the Casa Santa Joaquina in Vinalesa.

The dynamics carried out was the same as the other community meetings already held during this visit: we deepened the theme “Synodality and shared leadership”, interspersed with moments of presentation of the content, silences and sharing of resonances.

It was a rich experience, with a lot of participation and animation of the group. Some precious expressions were shared:

“We are in change, within the fragility we live in.”
“We have taken synodality more seriously than the church itself.”
“The Congregation is up to date, facing its own reality with courage.”

Some aspects that caught our attention during these days were:

In the Valencian Community the local language is Valencian, a dialect of Catalan. Many people speak it and it is also taught in schools.
The fartons dipped in the delicious horchata, is a very typical drink in the region of Valencia. Both make up one of the most common snacks in Valencian homes during the summer, mainly. The drink is made with tigernuts and is a symbol of Valencian culture and gastronomy.
The Levante region is very bright, there is a lot of light everywhere you go; perhaps this contributes to the fact that its people are usually cheerful and with a characteristic good mood.
In Alcoy, the Moors and Christians festivities stand out: their origin dates back to the 13th century, and they are an important part of Alcoy’s identity. They include the representation of the struggle between two sides, Muslim and Christian. They have been of International Tourist Interest since 1980 and of Intangible Cultural Interest since 2019. During our visit, the city was preparing for this great event and you could already feel the festive atmosphere in the air.
Also in Alcoy, we have the Vedruna Sports ClubThe Vedruna Sports Club, with a philosophy that promotes values in which we believe very much: all are equally important and within the integral formation of the same as athletes will always be taken into account the following premises:
- Respect for all the members of the club and all the people who are part of the competition.
- Respect for own and other people’s facilities
- Prioritizing participation over competition
- Promote values such as fellowship, empathy, sportsmanship and fair play among its members.
During our visit to the Conde de Trénor street community, we witnessed a big march for housing in the city. The five demands of the social organizations were: “We want a 50% reduction in rents, a halt to evictions of vulnerable people, illegalization of eviction companies, a return to indefinite contracts as long as the tenant complies and regularization of the tourist market”.
In La Union, a mining town, there is the tradition of the Child Jesus Miner. It is an image of Jesus with the small cross, carved by the artist Galo Conesa, for the Grouping of the Nazarene that, has been named “Perpetual Student” of the Carmelitas-Vedruna school, having received the student card. The strong meaning of this image of the Child Jesus Miner, is related to the sad memory of being a miner’s orphan, linked in turn with the purpose of our arrival in the city:
- “…in 1899 the Carmelite Sisters of Charity arrived in La Unión with the purpose of providing shelter, food, clothing, instruction and moral and religious education to the orphaned children of miners in the mountains of La Unión” – Niño Jesús Minero “Niño de la Gavia”, Perpetual Pupil of the Carmelite School of La Unión – Cofradía Cristo de los Mineros.
At the meeting of the communities in Vinalesa, we had the pleasure of tasting the delicious and well known Valencian paella. Its origin dates back to the XV and XVI century in the most rural areas of Valencia. This dish was born out of the peasants’ need to prepare an easy meal with the ingredients they had at hand. Nowadays, it has become the star dish in the homes of Valencia and one of the most outstanding dishes in Spanish gastronomy. There are two legends of the name of this typical gastronomic dish, the first one is because the word “paella” comes from the Latin word “patella” which means frying pan. But, others claim that it comes from the legend that a man prepared a paella to win the affection of his beloved, so he prepared a dish “for her”, the current paella.
In the community of Puerto de Sagunto, we ate two typical Moroccan dishes: the delicious “pita bread” or “Arabic bread” and the tasty Moroccan couscous with vegetables.
In Vinalesa we had the opportunity to participate in the parish’s nightly Stations of the Cross through the streets of the town. It was a particularly profound moment: with what a sense and attitude of reverence the people followed the Stations of the Cross! They recalled not only the path walked by Jesus, but also the realities where the passion of Jesus continues in so many persons and peoples crucified today by the situations of our world reality.