In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Peace be with you.

Dear Sisters, good morning and welcome!

I greet the Superiors present. I likewise offer good wishes to the newly elected Mother General and express my thanks to her predecessor in the role. It is with joy that I welcome all of you on the occasion of the Chapters you are celebrating.

You belong to two Congregations that were born in different circumstances yet from the same love for the poor. Saint Claudine Thévenet and the Religious of Jesus and Mary had a love for young women in difficult circumstances. Saint Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, Blessed Assunta Marchetti and Venerable Don Giuseppe Marchetti, the founders of the Missionary Sisters of Saint Charles Borromeo, Scalabrinians, had a love for migrants.

The guiding themes you have chosen for your respective Chapters – “Jesus himself drew near” (Lk 24:15) and “Wherevere you go, I will go” (Ruth 1:16) – are complementary in expressing the dynamics of your foundations. Indeed, they bring together God’s initiative and our response. In Saint Luke, we see Jesus joining the disciples of Emmaus and walking with them, leading them to recognize him in the breaking of bread, and making them apostles of his Resurrection. In the Book of Ruth, we see the young Moabite woman who, although she could have done so, does not abandon her mother-in-law Naomi, who has been left alone, but follows her to a foreign land to care for her to the very end.

The circumstances of your beginnings were not easy. For Saint Claudine there was the drama of the French Revolution, and for Bishop Scalabrini, Don Giuseppe and Mother Assunta there was the tragedy of mass emigration. None of them, however, backed down or became discouraged, even in the face of the difficulties that arose after their foundations. The secret of such fidelity is found precisely in their encounter with the Risen Jesus. That is where it all began for them and also for you. That is where we begin and from where we start again, when necessary, in order to carry on with courage and tenacity in spending ourselves in charity.

Moreover, if this is always true, it is especially so during a General Chapter, when Jesus walks alongside you and helps you to re-read your history in the light of Easter. During these days, may he always be at the centre. Give plenty of space, then, to prayer and silence throughout the course of your work. In a Chapter, the most important insights are gained “on our knees,” and what matures in the meeting rooms of the Chapter needs to be sown and sifted before the Tabernacle and in listening to the word. For it is only by listening to the Lord that we learn to truly listen to one another.

What is more, only in this way, following the example of Ruth, can we become increasingly capable of “seeking the face of God in our brothers and sisters in need” (Francis, Angelus, 26 October 2014), and of seeing in them “a promise, a hope, an epiphany of the divine presence, a gesture of God whose ‘glory’ is a human person fully alive” (Saint John Paul II, Homily for the Canonization of Claudine Thévenet and Teresa de Jesús de Los Andes, 21 March 1993, 4). This requires courage, so as to let ourselves be challenged by the presence of those who suffer, without fear of abandoning our own security, and to venture, if the Lord asks it, onto new paths. This, too, is part of your task as Capitulars.

I invite you, therefore, dear sisters, to live these days in humble listening to God and in courageous attention to the needs of others. And, in expressing my deep thanks for what you do in so many parts of the world, I promise to remember you in my prayers. Now, I will give you my heartfelt blessing. Thank you.