The General Definitory met at San Sebastián on 9–14 January 2017 to evaluate the past year and schedule the work for 2017.

It reviewed all the activities performed by the Definitory and the General Commissions, scheduled for 2016: the meetings of the Council and the Commissions, the Assembly of Major Superiors, the Canonical Visitations, the Regional Conferences and the work of the General Curia throughout the year.

On the subject of the programme for 2017, the members spoke above all about the sessions of the General Definitory and the General Commissions, the Canonical Visitations, and all the work scheduled for implementation during the course of the year.

The meeting then made a few adjustments to the calendar for the Provincial Chapters scheduled to take place in 2018 and examined the results of the first meeting of the 2019 General Chapter Preparatory Commission.

While in Spain, the members of the General Definitory had the opportunity to visit a number of centres and communities in the Castile Province. The first visit was to the hospital at Burgos, which provides diagnostic, curative and rehabilitation care as well as palliative care; they then visited the psychiatric hospital at San Sebastián, the general hospital at Santurce, which offers public and private medical care and surgery, the psychiatric hospital at Sant’Águeda de Mondragón, which has a long-term psychiatric care service, the hospital at Pamplona (which belongs to the Province of Aragon), a private centre serving the general public forming part of the Health Service of the Autonomous Community of Navarre, and lastly the Santa Clotilde Hospital at Santander.