This organization gives rise to the Sefras (Franciscan Service of Solidarity). A service that, in addition to responding to "institutional needs" , is an expression of the solidarity among the poorest and the most disadvantaged.
As of 2009, with the approval of law 12.101, which regulates philanthropic work in Brazil, the Franciscans, in discharging this term, dismembered the work of the Sefras from the religious institution and organized a new juridical personality to give continuity to the historic Franciscan social action.
The Bishops approved the reorganization of the Secretariat of Evangelization (a body which coordinates the work of evangelization of the Province), in five chapters: parishes and sanctuaries, education, communication, solidarity with impoverished and missions. In this new organizational context, Sefras becomes one of the five fronts of evangelization: the Solidarity Front for the Impoverished. Social work is recognized as an inherent action of evangelization.
In the year 2014, Law 13,019 was approved and came into force in 2016. It is the law popularly known as the "Regulatory Framework of Social Organizations" . This new regulation, of popular initiative, aims at giving greater legal certainty to the numerous organizations of civil society. Organizations that have their origins in people who, sensitive to social demands are willing to develop activities ranging from relief to human suffering to the promotion of life with dignity. Sefras is among the thousands of organizations throughout Brazil that have been covered by this legislation.
Finally, the mark of the footprints of the Franciscan presence is significant in the possible understandings of the word "periphery". From geographic to existential such as: children and adolescents, youth, the elderly, street population, recyclable waste pickers, incarcerated, migrants and people living with HIV / AIDS. Today, Sefras has 11 services, in three states of the federation, with an average capacity of 1600 daily calls.
It is important to point out that this vision is fully in resonance with the reading that the Pope presents from San Francisco in Laudato Si . He seeks to recover the history and image of the Saint of Assisi, linking with the challenges of the present: "It shows how inseparable are the concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society and inner peace. His testimony also shows us that an integral ecology requires openness to categories that transcend the language of exact sciences or biology and put us in touch with the essence of the human being. (...) This conviction can not be devalued as irrational romanticism, because it influences the options that determine our behavior. (...)San Francisco's poverty and austerity were not simply an outer asceticism , but something more radical: a renunciation of making reality a mere object of use and dominion. "(LS, & 10, 11, emphasis added). In this is Franciscan solidarity.
MISSION, VISION, VALUES AND GUIDELINES
The Franciscan Association's mission is "to promote actions and attitudes of solidarity with the impoverished and excluded, contributing to social transformation in the light of the Franciscan way of living and proclaiming the Gospel."
The vision that the Franciscan Association pursues to fulfill its purpose is to be a "social action based on social, human and environmental rights, based on Franciscan Christian principles, aimed at the construction of social and environmental justice."
