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Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and
Itinerant People
Patron Saints of Migration
Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917) was beatified in 1938 and canonized
in 1946. She founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus in 1880 with the intention of sending them to the missions in
the East. Pope Leo XIII urged her to dedicate herself to the Italian emigrants
who were going to North and South America by the thousands. Thus, her
adventure began in the West, not in the East, and she dedicated herself to
emigrants.
Pius XII, who proclaimed her as the "Celestial Patron of All Emigrants by
God's side" in 1950, made a wonderful synthesis of her activity among the
emigrants: "In many places in North, Central and South America, she
founded kindergartens for the emigrants' children, opened schools for them and
created public hospices for the orphans. She often visited the sick among the
people who had settled elsewhere; she would console the prisoners, and with
her pious heart and words, she would prepare the persons condemned to death to
atone for their crimes and undergo the punishment with Christian
sentiment".
John Baptist Scalabrini (1839-1905), Bishop of
Piacenza, lived the drama of the exodus of migrants who,during the last
decades of the nineteenth century, traveled in great numbers from Europe to
the countries in the New World.
He clearly saw the need for a specific pastoral care of migrants through a
suitable network of spiritual assistance. In this perspective, and giving
proof of a keen spiritual insight and a concrete practical sense, he founded
the Congregation of the Missionary Priests and the Missionary Sisters of Saint
Charles.
He strongly supported the need for legislative and institutional instruments
for the human and juridical protection of the migrants against all forms of
exploitation. Today, in different situations, the spiritual sons and daughters
of Msgr. Scalabrini, who were later joined by the "Secular Institute of
the Scalabrinian Missionary Women", continue to give witness to Christ's
love for migrants and to offer them the Gospel.
In 1998, John Paul II declared him Blessed and defined him as the "Father
of Migrants".
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