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The Very Rev. Alphonsus Maria Duran, M.J., founder and General Director of Miles Jesu, was born in Madrid, Spain in 1931. After he received his Bachelor of Arts degree at the university of Madrid he entered the seminary of the Claretian Missionaries in 1949. He was ordained a priest in 1956. After his transfer by his superiors to the United States in 1958, he founded the Cursillos in Christianity in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The also founded the Cursillos in Christianity in the states of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and in Chicago, Illinois. He founded the Cursillos in Christianity both in Spanish and in English.
In 1964, as the crowning fruit of Father's labors in the Cursillo movement, he founded the Lay Institute Miles Jesu, which embodies the spirit of the Cursillo and St. Anthony Mary Claret's writings on lay spirituality and the apostolate. Miles Jesu is a deepening of the living of the Cursillo ideal. Currently, Miles Jesu has communities in 13 countries, with over 1,000 members.
Father Duran has written innumerable articles on the spirituality on the laity and on authentic Christian formation. He also has written many pamphlets to promote the teachings of the Church in dogma in morals. Twelve million leaflets with his writings have been distributed in over 40 countries and five continents in eight languages. (You can find some of Father's writings in our Bookstore.)
He is an untiring apostle for the unity of Christians and the unity of the Church. He was the publisher, editor, and director of "Ultreya," an international magazine in English for the Cursillos in Christianity. He is a notable international retreat master and speaker. He holds a Ph.D. in Theology. Officially he resides in Rome where he is the General Director of the Institute he founded, though he frequently travels throughout the world to visit and promote the foundations in activities of Miles Jesu.
Father has suffered many hardships, trials, misunderstandings and even persecutions for his fidelity to the Church. But one would never know it when they see his spirit of joy and optimism that is deeply founded in God. The chapter Joy as the Gift of the Holy Spirit that he wrote in the Miles Jesu Constitution is a reflection of his spirit. One of Father's favorite invocations of the Mother of God is "Cause of our Joy."
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