Father Gabriel Mejia
Father Gabriel Mejia is a Catholic priest and the founder of the Hogares Claret Foundation, through which he currently operates 52 children’s shelters across Colombia. At any given time, the centers he oversees serve more than 3,500 orphans, homeless children, and young drug addicts — offering them food, shelter, education, and classes in Transcendental Meditation. Father Mejia feels that TM provide the children with a valuable tool to help them overcome the traumatic stress they suffered from living on the streets, and to enable them to live fuller lives.
Father Mejia holds that in his centers, “The basic therapy is love. Love is the imperial medicine for any illness or disorder…. When a child closes his eyes and begins to meditate they open themselves to the field of all possibilities… The world opens for the child. And then the child discovers their essential nature, which is love.”