A MESSAGE on the
occasion of the CENTENNIAL of the death of
Blessed
JOHN BAPTIST SCALABRINI
1905 -
2005
Rome
Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus
Christ,
King of the Universe
Greetings!
The year 2005 is
truly a year of great significance and grace for the Scalabrinian Family, which
embraces the Missionaries of St. Charles – Scalabrinians, the Missionary
Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo – Scalabrinians, and the Scalabrinian Secular
Missionary Women.
We are celebrating the 100th
anniversary of the death of Blessed John Baptist Scalabrini, who was born in
Fino Mornasco (
The Intuitions of Blessed John Baptist
Scalabrini, Bishop and Father to the Migrants
Soon after his death, the Church
began referring to Blessed John Baptist Scalabrini – Bishop of Piacenza from
1876 to 1905 – as “Father to the Migrants”, because of his timely and
far-sighted action on behalf of the Italians who were migrating in huge
numbers, especially to countries overseas. John Baptist Scalabrini clearly
grasped the political, social and religious impact of the phenomenon of
migration in modern society. He understood the global and permanent dimensions
of migration, even when some of his contemporaries considered it a passing
trend. Today we can only marvel at his prophetic intuition.
As missionary Bishop, Scalabrini
took to heart the plight of so many of his countrymen, who had no choice but to
migrate. While defending people’s right to migrate, he took on those who
claimed the right to force people to migrate and intervened to protect migrants
from exploitation by “agents of human flesh.” He traveled throughout
As a man of faith, he searched
for the signs of God’s plan even in the phenomenon of migration. Scalabrini
believed that all human events were directed by Divine Providence and this led
him to believe that even the anguished world of migration was the object of the
Father’s love: a world in which, with the unifying force of the Spirit, the
Father is at work in building solidarity, justice and peace, for the single
purpose of: “making out of many peoples one people, out of many families one
family.” And herein was Scalabrini’s
dream.
Following his two pastoral
visits to Italian migrants in the United States (1901) and in Brazil (1904),
Bishop Scalabrini became convinced that the Church needed to take to heart the
migrants’ cause, regardless of their nationality, ethnic origins or culture. He
outlined this in a proposal he sent to Pope Pius X as a special “Memorandum”,
which is his spiritual testament, entrusted to the Church, inviting her to see
in migration a God-given opportunity to show her “catholicity.”
The Timeliness of The Scalabrinian Charism
As Scalabrini’s sons and daughters,
we make ourselves migrants with the migrants so as to share their journey of
hope, in solidarity and communion. Aware
that our charism places us at the center of the mission and at the very heart
of the Church’s spirituality of communion, we feel called to promote communion
in diversity and to bring together God’s scattered children, particularly those
living most acutely the drama of migration.
It is a wide ranging mission which is not limited to migrants, but
reaches out to the local civil and Church communities as well. The phenomenon of migration challenges the
very foundations of civil and religious coexistence, and is to be considered
the ultimate test of a society’s level of civilization and of the catholic
identity of Church.
The Three Institutes of The Scalabrinian
Family
The Congregation of the
Missionaries of St. Charles – Scalabrinians is an international community of religious
brothers and priests founded in
The Congregation of The
Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo – Scalabrinians was established in
On July 25th, 1961,
fifty-six years after the death of Blessed J. B. Scalabrini, and drawn by his
spirituality, another Scalabrinian Institute, the Secular Institute of
the Scalabrinian Missionary Women, began its journey in Solothurn
(Switzerland). Rising out of a Scalabrinian pastoral context, its roots
are in the phenomenon of migration. This new offshoot of the Scalabrinian
Charism, which seeks to live the consecrated life in a secular context, received
the Church’s final approval on Easter Sunday 1990. These missionary women are
active in Europe (
Each of our three Institutes
offers its own specific contribution. But what binds us together is a shared
concern for migrants and refugees and a joint vision of a new society
transformed by the elimination of all traces of exclusion and by increased
opportunities for belonging and participation, making “the whole world
humanity’s common homeland.” We work
together in serving that Kingdom, which is at work in human history and
especially in the world of migrants.
Migrants, Refugees and Displaced Persons
Today
In the era of globalization,
migrations are no longer to be considered a passing trend, limited and
restricted in nature, but, rather, a widespread, permanent and structural
phenomenon. In the last decades this phenomenon has expanded dramatically,
rising to a sustained and dynamic planet-wide phenomenon.
Demographic, economic
and social reasons are jointly responsible for this inevitable increase in
migration. In our increasingly globalized world, where the movement of people
touches each person’s life, the most important objective should not be stopping
human mobility, but, rather, managing it as best as possible for the good of
all. Unfortunately, the governmental immigration policies of almost 40% of the
world’s countries reveal a tendency toward restrictive measures, particularly
with regards to border controls and easy expulsions.
Migrants are an
extremely vulnerable category of people, easy victims of abuse and
exploitation. Simply think of the modern “slave trade”, which spares neither
women nor children, and of the smuggling of migrants which has become a
veritable international trade. For such reasons, the United Nations has
promulgated the International
Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and the
Members of their Families. This
Convention, however, has yet to be ratified by the larger receiving countries.
In reality, the international market depends on temporary workers, on flexible,
but unprotected and unsafe labor.
However, “It is necessary to reiterate
that foreign workers are not to be considered merchandise or merely manpower.
Therefore they should not be treated just like any other factor of production.
Every migrant enjoys inalienable fundamental rights which must be respected in
all cases.”.[1] Unstable and insecure employment on the
economic level often translates into more problems on the social level,
provoking repeated incidents of intolerance and xenophobia. “The precarious
situation of so many foreigners, which should arouse everyone’s solidarity,
instead brings about fear in many, who feel that immigrants are a burden,
regard them with suspicion and even consider them a danger and a threat. This
often provokes expressions of intolerance, xenophobia and racism”.[2]
With regards to international
events, we must also take into account the aftermath of September 11th,
2001. After the attack on the
Some international institutions
are aware of these developments and have increasingly stated their preference
that migration be dealt with from a supranational perspective and through a
multilateral approach. This phenomenon needs to be addressed in all its
aspects, and not be limited exclusively to security concerns. Actually,
migration reflects the deeper global imbalance which underlies and causes it.
It is the result of a perverse system which maintains large areas of the world
in a condition of underdevelopment, forcing the movement of their peoples
toward more developed economies. “Migration raises a truly ethical question:
the search for a new international economic order for a more equitable
distribution of the goods of the earth. This would make a real contribution to
reducing and checking the flow of a large number of migrants from populations
in difficulty”.[3]
Migrations: Challenge and Resource for
Church and Society
Everyone is aware by now that
international society is undergoing a process of irreversible transformation,
and is becoming increasingly multiethnic and plurireligious. This
transformation, in which migration plays an important – though not exclusive –
role, is to be seen as both a challenge and resource for society in general and
for the Church’s new evangelizing mission in particular.
Pope John Paul II has pointedly
underscored this fact for both the Church and the world. In his encyclical Redemptoris
Missio he states: “Among the great changes taking place in the contemporary
world, migration has produced a new phenomenon: non-Christians are becoming very
numerous in traditionally Christian countries, creating fresh opportunities for
contacts and cultural exchanges, and calling the Church to hospitality,
dialogue, assistance and, in a word, fraternity” (RM 37), but also to “service,
sharing, witness and direct proclamation” (RM 82). We are dealing with those
“new worlds and social phenomena,” with those “areopagi”, which determine the
new parameters of the mission “ad gentes.”
In his latest Migration Day
Message, Pope John Paul II stressed that “the world of immigrants can make a
valid contribution to the consolidation of peace”.[4]
John Baptist Scalabrini,
anticipating the times, placed fully his hope on “the children of misery and
labor”: in the migrants he saw potential signs and witnesses of communion, the
gift of Pentecost, where differences are reconciled by the Spirit and love
finds its validity in welcoming the other.
Rethinking The Future With The Stranger In
Mind
This new century has been called
the century of the stranger “par excellence”.
Some migrants are forced out of their lands
and communities by persecution or ethnic cleansing. Others leave their
homelands because of poverty and hunger, desperately seeking the bread of
survival. The poor, the hungry and the wretched of the so-called third or fourth
world, deprived even of the bear minimum, are the strangers “par excellence” of
the 21st century. Entering the affluent cities of our western world,
they cry out their anguish and their right to share in this affluence.
But the displaced and hungry
migrants are not our century’s only strangers; people in general are also
becoming strangers to themselves. It’s that sense of estrangement whereby a
person perceives itself as foreigner within it’s own culture, in trying to
establish it’s own individual otherness and transcendence.
This new century, then, marked
by the troubling experience of feeling foreign even to one’s immediate
surroundings, (be they a foreign language or country, or the deprivation of the
basic goods or the violation of one’s identity), is in need of a new way of
thinking. It offers the favorable
opportunity and the outright urgent necessity to restructure our relations with
the strangers among us, perceiving them not as a threat, as has too often
occurred, but as something sacred, as has seldom been the case. New categories
must be found to help rethink our concept of “stranger”. Though an outsider,
the stranger must not be perceived as a threat to be removed, but as a “word”
to be welcomed. This “word”, once accepted, opens new ethical dimensions and a
fresh outlook, no longer centered on our personal “ego”, with its demands for
satisfactions and rights, but on the “other,” whose countenance reflects a
light coming from beyond.
|
P. Isaia Birollo,
C.S. Superior General Missionaries of Scalabrinians |
Sr. Maria do Rosario
Onzi, MSCS Superior
General
Missionary Sisters of
Scalabrinians |
Adelia Firetti, MSS General Administrator Secular Missionaries
Women Scalabrinians |