It is located on the ground plot of San Sebastian, in a district of the same name, outside the walls of Manila, where the Augustinian Recollect fathers have a convent whose foundation dates from the year 1621, and a magnificent iron church dedicated in the year 1891, in which is venerated the miraculous image of our Lady of Carmel.
This beaterio, separated from the convent only by the portico which gives entrance to the church, was founded about the year 1730, and was due principally to our father Fray Andrés de San Fulgencio, who, acceding to the reiterated urgings and petitions of some pious women, who desired to live in retreat from the excitement of the world, built them a house, and gave them the habit of manteletas, or Tertiaries of the Augustinian order.
The preferred occupations in which those pious women who have had the good fortune to take our holy habit in this beaterio, have busied themselves, have been, and are at present, beside their own sanctification, the solid and Christian instruction and education of a certain number of girls; the cleaning and renovating of our church of San Sebastian; and the propagation of worship and devotion to our Lady of Carmel, for whom they act as the perpetual attendants.
They lead a very austere life, and one completely abstracted from the world, scarcely ever leaving the beaterio unless to go to the church, and it is a very remarkable circumstance that in the two hundred years almost, which have elapsed since their foundation, no sister who has taken the habit has abandoned it in order to return to the world.
The inspection and direction of the beaterio belong to the father prior of the convent of San Sebastian, who, with the consent of our father provincial, dictates the suitable provisions for maintaining in that holy house the spirit of piety with which it was founded.
School of San José of Bacolod, Negros
In the intermediary chapter, celebrated in the convent of Manila, October 31, 1895, the installation (in Bacolod, the capital of the island of Negros) of a college of primary and secondary instruction, was determined upon. That determination of the chapter was approved by the most reverend apostolic father, commissary-general of the order, December 18, of the same year 95. January 28, 1896, the very reverend father provincial, Fray Andrés Ferrero, now his Excellency, the bishop of Jaro, petitioned his Excellency the governor-general to have the kindness to authorize him as founder of a school of primary and secondary instruction in the province of Negros under the advocacy of San José, in which they could establish all the courses, the study of which was required in order to obtain the degree of bachelor of arts.
The superior government acceded to the petition by a decree dated February 21, of the same year, on condition of first receiving a favorable report from the very reverend father rector of the royal and pontifical university of Manila. In June of the same year they proceeded to the opening of the school of Bacolod, which was placed under the said university. The disasters that occurred in this archipelago in consequence of the insurrection, have been the cause of this school running for only two years.