NEW BOOK

A new publication from the Teresian Historical Institute (Institutum Historicum Teresianum) in Rome.

José Luis Ferroni Palacios, OCD, The Fusion of the Spanish and Italian Congregations of the Discalced Carmelite Friars (1868-1881), Studia 14, Institutum Historicum Teresianum, Roma 2013. 116 p.

Among the plans for religious reform during the pontificate of Pius IX was the centralization of religious Orders by having  their respective superior general stationed in Rome, which the Discalced Carmelites were enabled by the fusion of the Spanish into the Italian Congregation in 1875.

The Discalced Carmelite Order had its Superior General in Spain until March 20, 1597, when it was divided  into two Congregation.  The Italian Congregation was made independent with its own Superior General in Rome on November 13, 1600.  Anticlerical laws of exclaustration in Spain had caused massive dispersion and disruption to religious Orders, in 1835.  With the help of a concordat between Spain and the Holy See in 1851 and with the help of Carmelites from the Italian Congregation in 1868,  the arduous work of restoring the Teresian Carmel in Spain had begun leading to its fusion in 1875 and centralization in 1881 when the Discalced Carmelites and their new singular Superior General ceased from using the term «Congregation»  and became the Order as we know it today.   This book, therefore, recounts precisely the story of the proponents and opponents who fiercely struggled to restore an Order left in shambles, within a Church trying to regain political balance amidst an unsettled Government.  José Luis Ferroni is a Discalced Carmelite priest from the California-Arizona Province doctoring in Ecclesiastical History at the Pontifical Gregorian University.  He is member and administrator of the Teresian Historical Institute at the Theological Faculty «Teresianum» in Rome