The Shalom Catholic Community was founded on July 9, 1982, after its founder, Moysés Louro de Azevedo Filho, offered his life and youth to bring Christ and the Catholic Church to those who were distant, especially the youth.
On June 30, 1980, Pope John Paul II arrived in Brazil for his first visit to the country. The pontiff visited 13 cities and took part in the opening of the X International Eucharistic Congress in Fortaleza (CE). When he was 20 years old, Moysés Azevedo was chosen by the Archbishop of Fortaleza, Dom Aloísio Lorsheider, to give a gift to the Pope in the name of the Archdiocese’s youth. Moysés started to pray, asking God what he should offer to the Pope and, on the 9th of July, he gave John Paul II a letter in which he abandoned himself in the hands of God and the Church for the evangelization of the youth.
Exactly two years after the meeting with the pontiff, the first Shalom Catholic Evangelization Centre, a coffee house and a bookstore, were opened, with the mission of announcing God’s love to the people who came to have a meal. There, they could seek out advice, help and comfort.
These events did not happen with the pretension of founding anything, but rather through receiving God’s will through prayer. In 1983, the first experiences of community life began. The evangelized youth started to take part in the prayer groups, which were being formed. Many young people started to serve more intensely, thus involving the first “committed” group, the seed of Covenant Community.
In 1985, in front of the Lord’s Altar, Moysés and four other young people made their promises as the first consecrated members of Life Community. After one year, the co-founder, Maria Emmir Nogueira, entered Life Community. She was present in the Community from the beginning, assisting the organization in accordance with the manifestation of God’s will.
The prayer groups multiplied; the works of evangelization, formation and human promotion intensified; vocations arose and bishops asked for Shalom houses in their dioceses. In 1995, through the strong intervention of Divine Providence, the process of preparing the Community’s Statutes began. On February 17, 1995, the process was interrupted because of the sudden death of a Life Community missionary, Ronaldo Pereira, aged 24, in a car accident. The following year, the process began again.
In 1998, the Shalom Catholic Community obtained canonical recognition from the Archbishop of Fortaleza, Cardinal Claudio Hummes.
The Pontifical Recognition was decreed in 2007 by the Pontifical Council for the Laity, an institution linked to the Holy See, which approved the Statutes on an experimental basis. On February 22, 2012, at the end of the ad experimentum period, the Holy See confirmed the recognition of the Shalom Catholic Community as a private international association of the faithful and made a definitive approval of its Statutes.
The Community has missions in many dioceses throughout the world and continues to grow, fulfilling its mission to evangelize and to form the sons and daughters of God.