Who are the Augustinians, the order to which the new Pope Leo XIV belongs?

The new Pope chosen this Thursday, Leo XIV, is the first Augustine to direct the Catholic Church.

As its name indicates, the order follows the line of thought of St. Augustine. Its members are called Augustinian or Augustinian friars.

In the eleventh century, this religious order was the first of the Roman Catholic Church in combining clerical status with a full community life. Modern emphasis has been put into mission, education and hospital work.

Community life is central to the Augustinians, such as sharing and fraternity. This line of thought also values ​​study and critical thinking, which, as St. Augustine, believes that faith and reason go hand in hand.

Thus, it is common for Augustine to work in universities and schools, as well as social causes.

Following this path, Robert Prevost, the new Pope, was 30 when he moved to Peru in the framework of an Augustinian mission, which encompasses evangelization, human promotion, education and follow -up of Jesus Christ, lived through the Augustinian charism.

The Order of San Agustín is one of the Mendicantes orders of the Catholic Church, organizations that still exist today. Among the most famous are also the Franciscans and the Dominicans.

Mendicant orders arose in the Middle Ages as a counterpoint to the monastic orders.

They left the idea that it no longer made sense that the religious were enclaustrated in a distant monastery at the top of a mountain.

In this sense, they postulate that the Church should not hide from the problems of the world, but rather to meet them.

Son of the Catholic mother-which would later be Santa Monica-and Pagano father, Patricio, who would only become Christianity in his deathbed, Aurelio Agustín de Hipona (354-430) was born in Tagaste, where today is the city of Souk Ahras, in Algeria.

His life was full of worldly pleasures until he became Christianity and became a great philosopher and theologian.

As a child he was educated in Latin and, at age 11, he was taken to a school about 30 kilometers from his hometown, where he learned literature and customs of Roman civilization.

There he had access to classic works of philosophy, having contact with authors such as Marco Tulio Cicero (106 AC – 43 AC), to whom Agustín himself later attributed the role of responsible for arouseing his interest in the subject.

At 17 Agustín went to Carthage, in what is today Tunisia, to study rhetoric. Raised within the Christian principles, due to the education of his mother, it was there that he ended up adopting positions that contradicted his faith.

He embraced Manichaeism as a doctrine and, in the company of other young people, he began to live with a hedonistic spirit. His group boasted to collect sexual experiences, listing adventures with both women and men.

Agustín got involved with a local girl, but, contrary to what society expected, he decided not to marry her. They lived as lovers and had a son, Adeodato, who knows little beyond that he died young.

He only hugged faith when he was about 30 years old. According to his own story, he was impressed when he came into contact with the history of the life of Antonio Abad (San Antonio del Desert 251-356), an eremitic that would end up being known as the “father of all monks.” And, in that trance, I would have heard a childish voice that said: “Here, read.” Agustín interpreted him as an order: he had to take the Bible and read the first passage he found.

He fell precisely in a passage from the letter from St. Paul to the Romans, in which the apostle talked about how the Holy Scriptures would have the power to transform the behavior of human beings.

“Let us decently behavior, as in the light of day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissensions and envies. Rather, let’s revist from the Lord Jesus Christ and we do not worry about satisfying the wishes of the flesh,” the passage urges.

He understood the message as something for himself. In the Easter of the year 387 he was baptized by the Bishop of Medialanum, Aurelio Ambrosio (340-397). The following year, accompanied by his mother and son, he decided to return to Africa.

Monica, however, died before embarking. Adeodato would die shortly after his return. Sorry for his family’s misfortunes, Agustín decided to sell all his assets and donate money to the poor.

He retained only his house, turned into a monastery.

In the year 391 he was ordered priest in Hipona, in the same province of Numidia. Then, the conversion Agustín allowed to use all its scholarship in favor of Christianity. He would soon become a great preacher and a great theoretical student of the foundations of religion.

A few years later, at the end of the fourth century, he would be appointed Bishop of Hippo. Until the end of his life he dedicated himself to preaching, studying and writing, always maintaining a frugal and ascetic style.

According to stories of a contemporary bishop of his, Possidio, he had become a man who ate little, worked a lot, did not like conversations about the life of others and was a skilled financial administrator of the works of his community.

Agustín was one of the pioneers in defending that the human being was the perfect union of two substances, the body and the soul, an understanding that ended up influencing in much of the philosophy that would be built thereafter.

He also laid the foundations of ecclesiology, proposing that the Church was a unique and legitimate entity, but that it needed to be understood under two realities. The visible part would be formed by the hierarchical institution and the sacraments; but the invisible would be constituted by the souls of practitioners.

When he arrived at 75 he got sick. He died on August 28, 430. At a time when the Church had not defined objective criteria for the canonization, he ended up becoming a holy by popular clamor.

In 1298, Pope Bonifacio VIII (1235-1303) granted him the posthumous title of Church Doctor.

One of the most important representatives of the Augustinians was Martin Luther (1483-1546).

As a priest, Luther seemed uncomfortable with the monopoly of the faith that the Catholic Church had, especially because he noticed that there was a marketing of indulgences, the total forgiveness of sins that, at that historic moment was being negotiated by the religious in exchange for cash payments.

The Germanic Non -German monk ended, unintentionally, promoting what was known as the Protestant reform, a movement that opened the doors of religion, breaking the monopoly of the Catholic Church and allowing several other Christian churches to be existed in the western world.

At that time, Luther was already a renowned religious figure, with a respectable academic career.

On October 31, 1517, the Augustinian published 95 thesis at the door of the Church of the Castle of Wittenberg. Basically, he questioned this thanksgiving and the absolute power of the Church in the popular faith, and affirmed that the Bible was the main text that should be considered, above any papal authority.

From then on, the religious was subject to a long process until in 1520 the Vatican determined his excommunication.

His expulsion from the Church ended up giving rise to other Christian denominations, opening the doors of religion, breaking the monopoly of the Catholic Church and allowing several other Christian churches to be existed in the western world.

*With Edison Veiga reports.

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