The goal of International Fraternal Collaboration is to strengthen fraternal life in areas of numerical decline, in the hope of allowing circumscriptions to reform themselves and return to a healthy situation. While we most often think of Fraternal Collaboration in the context of numerically weak provinces, it is also an expression of mutual interdependence and international brotherhood that is an important sign in itself. In this sense, it is not just a solution to the problem of declining numbers, but it is an expression of our charism.” The composition of the Order has changed significantly in the last twenty years. In Western Europe and North America, our traditional core, the number of friars is declining and the average age is increasing. In Asia and Africa, areas once considered “mission territory,” on the other hand, the number of friars has increased by 50% in the last 20 years. Finally, in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, the number of friars has remained essentially the same over the last 20 years. But, as was pointed out at the meeting of ALAC in Peru in January 2018, this stability is not because there are a lot of vocations that take the place of the friars who are dying. Instead, there are fewer vocations, but fortunately also fewer deaths and because they have a relatively low average age. One way the Order is responding to these changes is by way of International Fraternal Collaboration. By International Fraternal Collaboration is meant a long-term sharing of friars between two or more circumscriptions of the Order. This sharing is overseen and approved by the General Minister and regulated by a contract approved by the General Council.
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