Guijón, Spain. Initiatives of very diverse types to celebrate the first century of Claretian presence throughout the year.

Gijón, an important city on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea that was visited by St. Anthony Mary Claret, has welcomed the Claretian Missionaries since 1922. The Congregation is in charge of a parish with enough vitality, the school run by a religious family with more students in the region, and the attention to the Marian sanctuary of Contrueces.

For months now, a wide variety of events have been held to celebrate the event, which has been reported in the most important media. A few days ago the Archbishop of the Diocese presided over a Mass of thanksgiving with the presence of the Claretian communities of Gijón and Oviedo. Weeks before, Cardinal Aquilino Bocos shared a day with the educators of the Corazon de Maria School, which attends to almost one thousand six hundred students and their families. Several students of the school have carried out research works to know better the missionary history of the Claretian community; one of them has been awarded a prize by the European Union.

Together with the parishes of the cities of Gijón and Oviedo, the Missionaries attended for almost forty years a good number of small mountain villages in the councils of Belmonte and Somiedo, in a service very appreciated by the Diocese. Some religious communities have been attended daily by the Claretians for almost eighty years. Thousands of families in the region have had some link with the Congregation.