Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception

The Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception is an Institute of Consecrated Life which follows the Augustinian Rule, and is part of the Canonical Order of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine.

History

This Religious Order was founded at Saint-Claude, in the Department of Jura and later at Saint-Antoine, in the Department of Isère, France, by the Abbé Dom Adrien Gréa, and approved by Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII, in three rescripts (1870, 1876, and 1887). The first four members of the Congregation took their first vows in 1866, and together with two other Canons perpetual vows in 1871.

The members of the Congregation undertook the restoration of the full canonical life with its primitive observances, the recitation of the whole of the Divine Office day and night, perpetual abstinence and the fasts of earlier times. Their object being to unite the practices of ordinary religious life with clerical functions, principally in the administration of pastoral duties in parishes and the education of young clerics.

The mother-house was maintained at Saint-Claude, from 1865 until 1890, and then at Saint-Antoine, from 1890 until 1903, however following the French laws of 1901 and the persecution of the Church which was the consequence thereof, the community was transferred to Andora Stazione, in the province of Genoa, Italy, and then to near the Gianicolo in Rome in 1922 where the Mother house of the congregation remains until today, and the Superior General usually resides.

The...
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