Scalabrinian Secular Missionary Women

Scalabrinian Secular Missionary Women

Missionarie secolari scalabriniane: Regina Widmann è la nuova responsabile generale

The Secular Institute was born on Easter Sunday 1990 in Solothurn, Switzerland, in a deeply Scalabrinian context, steeped in migration. It had already been recognized in 1967 as the Pious Union of the Scalabrinian Secular Missionary Women by the Bishop of Basel.

This third face of the Scalabrinian Charism grew out of a radical choice of consecration to God in the world, through which women experience the gratuitous acceptance of Jesus crucified and risen, recognizable especially in the poorest migrants, robbed of their dignity.

I was a stranger and you welcomed me(Mt 25,35). Christ himself calls to share in the pain and the hope of migrant man, to step down with him into the harshest conditions of injustice, marked by fragmentation and dispersion. Journeying on the roads of the Exodus with the migrants of all ethnic, cultural and religious background, the secular missionary women perceive in the drama of migration a means for the unification of the human family in Christ.

The Trinitarian communion unites the Institute from different origins in small international communities, located in the most diverse social contexts, where new relationships are fashioned, differences are valued as assets, each gesture of openness to the other and each missionary outreach.

As secular missionary women, with no outward sign distinguishing them from others, nor fixed institutions, they are sent out to be in constant dialogue with the world, to recognize in any environment an ideal place where to make room for the life of Jesus poor, virgin and obedient, the true universal man.

In multicultural situations, in Europe, in Brazil and in Mexico, they are involved in the social, cultural and pastoral field, working in the sectors of academics, health, education, spirituality, etc.

Their mission is the proclamation and the Christian formation of migrants, young people, friends for openness to universal communion.