HISTORY OF OUR COMMUNITY

St. Martin de Porres priory was born from a vision among the friars of the Southern Dominican Province: "to form a new community through the process of individual and communal conversion guided by the vision of and dedicated to becoming what St. Dominic called, ‘The Holy Preaching.’"

This founding vision of the community called "The Grass Roots Vision Statement" stated that the priority of our life in Raleigh would be the common life - with ministry, study, prayer and fraternal sharing as constitutive parts.

These "pillars" of our life together would emphasize:

• a recovery of our contemplative life, with prayer at the center • a practice of faith sharing and struggle sharing as a group • a proximity to the poor and the marginated • multi cultural living • radical sharing of goods while being financially self-sustaining • a rededication to communal study • a practice of hospitality • on-going evaluation • participation in the formation of our province’s training of candidates ("initial formation")* • a model of leadership that is, inclusive, participative, accountable and obedient • shared recreation • a common discernment of each other’s gifts

The first community consisted of: Michael Burke, James Burke, James Campbell, Martin Iott, Art Kirwin and Jude Siciliano. We were established in the Autumn of 1994 as a formal house of the Southern Dominican Province based in New Orleans.

*Since our founding in 1994 we have been the host of numerous student brothers who did summer ministries in the Latino community and have done their CPE programs at local hospitals.

Some of the community have also given workshops and retreats to our province’s novices and brothers in training. .

But regardless of the difference of ministries, central to our lives together has been: