Vision

«[The Founder] was obeying the mandate given the apostles to bring the message of the Gospel to the poorest and farthest away from God (…). This apostolic sensitivity reached its peak when he turned his attention to the migrants. With the help of his missionaries and lay people of good will, he conceived on behalf of the migrants a plan of action that would answer their human and social needs and -through the very fact of their migration, even when caused by injustices and demographic imbalances and marked by suffering and oppression – would en able them to contribute to the solidarity of all people, to social progress, and above all to the spread of the faith and the unification of the human family in Christ».

Rules of Life, 3

Identity

«The Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles (Scalabrinians) is an apostolic community of religious that shares in the missionary activity Christ continues in the Church for the realization of the plan of God in the world and in history. This plan was fully revealed in Christ himself, who was sent by the Father “to bring glad tidings to the poor” and “to gather into one all the dispersed children of God.”Even now this plan can be discerned in the events, the needs, and the longings of people».

Rules of Life, 1

Mission

«The mission the Church entrusts to us through our Founder, John Baptist Scalabrini, Bishop of Piacenza (1839-1905), is this: to become migrants with the migrants, so as to build with them, even by the witness of our life and our community, the Church, which in its earthly pilgrimage associates itself particularly with the poorest and most abandoned classes of people; and also to help people discover Christ in their migrant brothers and sisters and perceive in migration a sign of mankind’s eternal calling».

Rules of Life, 2

Choice

«In accordance with the will of the Church, the intentions of our Founder, and the history of the Congregation, we reaffirm our preferential option for those migrants who are more acutely living the drama of migration».

Rules of Life, 5

«Of itself, the apostolic purpose of our mission impels us to promote the total salvation of the human person. So, besides spiritual assistance, we give the migrants our human, social, and cultural help. We denounce the causes of the evils that afflict them and we struggle to stamp them out while promoting the migrants’ fellowship and their participation within the community that welcomes them. We look on the lay people’s collaboration in this task as most important, as our Founder taught us from the very beginning».

Rules of Life, 7

Synergy

«Our pastoral ministry is integrated into the ministry of the local Church: we adjust our options and methods of work to its policies, so that the pastoral care of the migrants becomes the concern of the local Church itself. Such an integration, carried out with full respect for our own apostolic identity, commits us to making the clergy and the laity sensitive to the values and needs of the migrants».

Rules of Life, 8