Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception

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The Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception are a Roman Catholic congregation which follows the Augustinian Rule, and part of the Canonical Order of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine.

[edit] History

This Catholic Religious order was founded at Saint-Claude, in the Department of Jura and later at Saint-Antoine, in the Department of Isère, France, by the Abbé Dom Adrien Gréa, and approved by Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII, in three rescripts (1870, 1876, and 1887). The first three members of the Congregation took their first vows in 1866, and together with two other Canons perpetual vows in 1871.

The members of the Congregation undertook the restoration of the full canonical life with its primitive observances, the recitation of the whole of the Divine Office day and night, perpetual abstinence and the fasts of earlier times. Their object being to unite the practices of ordinary religious life with clerical functions, principally in the administration of pastoral duties in parishes and the education of young clerics.

The mother-house was maintained at Saint-Claude, from 1865 until 1890, and then at Saint-Antoine, from 1890 until 1903, however following the French laws of 1901 and the persecution of the Church which was the consequence thereof, the community was transferred to Andora Stazione, in the province of Genoa, Italy, and then to near the Gianicolo in Rome in 1922 where the Mother house of the congregation remains until today, and the Superior General usually resides.

The Congregation though small in number is truly international, having houses in France, Italy, Peru, where a mission was established in 1905, England where the community has been present since 1932, the United States, and Canada, the first mission of the Congreagtion, established in 1891, at Nomingue in Ottawa and at St. Boniface, Manitoba, were four establishments in the Diocese of Ottawa, six in that of St. Boniface, two in Saskatchewan and one in Prince Albert, a city was composed of eight priests and major clerics, and of about as many scholastics, postulants and lay brothers. The priests have been successfully employed in colonization and the education of youth.

The Congregation of the Immaculate Conception together with eight other congregations of Canons Regular make up the Confederation of Canons Regular of St. Augustine.

In 2008 the congregation has houses in Italy, France, Canada, Peru, Brasil, and England. The community has remained faithful to its original charism of combining religious life in community and this being undertaken in the context of parish life. The current Superior General Rt. Rev. Fr. Riccardo Belleri has held office since the General Chapter of the Congregation elected him to this position in July 2006.

In England, the Congregation has charge of a parish in Milton Keynes in Northampton Diocese, and in the U.S.A. the community has charge of two parishes and a house of formation in Santa Paula in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.