The Franciscan mission in Morocco is traditionally considered the oldest in the Order. In 2010, the Custody of the Holy Martyrs of Morocco was established, reporting directly to the Minister General. The Custody currently has 18 friars, including only one temporarily professed, who discovered his vocation in Morocco and asked to join us. The other 17 brothers are "loaned" by their home Province for six years or more. They currently come from 14 different provinces corresponding to 11 nationalities: the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Poland, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil and Peru. Currently the friars are divided into 5 fraternities, two in the diocese of Tangier (in the north of the country) and three in the diocese of Rabat (in the centre). These are small missionary fraternities of 3 or 4 friars.
Fraternal life
To say that fraternal life is the first pillar of our mission may seem obvious. However, it takes on a very special meaning in this land. In fact, friars from all over the world are accustomed to spending their lives in a Province where they enter, form and mature together, united by shared traditions and a common history. None of this in Morocco: everyone comes from a different cultural and Franciscan world.
This reality means that, as one of our friars put it, the mission begins here when we open the door of our room because the fraternal life of 3 or 4 already represents a linguistic, cultural and human challenge. This implies effort on the part of everyone and the ability to open up to the reality of the other. This makes our fraternities and our Custody a laboratory of intercultural coexistence in constant search of fraternity and balance, a school of love and minority to allow each one to be himself and to give the best of himself.
Service to the Church
Today the country has more than thirty religious congregations and more than 25,000 faithful, all foreigners. The vast majority are sub-Saharan students who come to study in Morocco before returning to their country or accessing further studies in Europe. But they are joined by more and more workers who have decided to stay in Morocco, whether they be expats coming from the Western world or former students who have found work here.
The Franciscan friars are currently in charge of 7 parishes that are meeting places for students as well as for immigrants and workers (in a totally Moroccan and Muslim world) and which are also places of spiritual and human construction (especially for immigrants deconstructed by the way they travel and arrive, for Christian prisoners who for many years only receive visits from the chaplain and for students who reach adulthood and learn here to live independently and responsibly for the first time). Parishes are places of reference for them, both for catechesis and the sacraments and for the presence of the social services provided by Caritas. They are a crossing point, oases that we want to be fraternal in the paths of all. It is for us, the friars, a school of adaptability and gratuitousness: we sow and others will reap.
The presence and encounter of the Muslim world
When St. Francis of Assisi evokes the mission amongst Muslims in the Rule of 1221, he proposes two ways of considering the spiritual role of the brethren, the first consisting of "not quarrelling or arguing, being subject to every human creature for God's sake, and simply confessing that they are Christians" (Rnb 16:6). This is how we feel sent by the Order to the Moroccan people: not as competitors or proselytes, but as witnesses called to live among them, to incarnate ourselves there and to live from the encounter "as prayers amongst other prayers" (Christian de Chergé, martyr of Tibhirine).
In order to develop areas of contact with the Muslim population of Morocco and not to remain among Christians despite the multiplicity of their needs, the Custody has opened three cultural centres where the friars act as teachers for people of all ages who wish to learn languages in particular. Through relationships with local volunteer teachers, support for students, cultural activities (cinema, debates, reading or writing workshops, theatre, etc.) or ecological projects, the friars gradually enter into the culture of this country, putting themselves at the service of all.
This dialogue of life (in the life shared in the middle of a popular Muslim neighbourhood by a particular fraternity) and this dialogue of charity (through works in favour of Moroccans or the poor, in collaboration with other Moroccans or with local associations) end up mysteriously opening up to spiritual dialogue. It is certainly at this level that the essential part of our mission is realized, invisibly, in the transformation of our hearts and in the elusive transformation of the hearts of the men and women around us.
The Franciscan Family
Today, in addition to the Friars Minor, Morocco has a monastery of six Poor Clare Sisters and about sixty Sisters and Brothers of the Secular Third Order. We share with these communities the same challenges, that of inculturation in the country, that of the interculturality of our communities and that of a certain isolation with significant distances between communities. Gathered at the Chapter of the Mats in March 2024, we sought how to receive our call to live the mission here in a new way and adapted to the calls of those we meet, Moroccans, migrants and our own faithful. Together we listen to the Holy Spirit with the desire to be able to live in a more prophetic way this mission, so special and so small, that the Lord has entrusted to us.
In the joy of the vocation that we have here, we count on your prayers to be more faithful every day to this call of the Lord that surpasses all of us!
Br. Stéphane Delavelle, OFM
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