John Baptist Scalabrini

Transcription

1 me Legacy of Blessed John Baptist Scalabrini Very Rev. Isaia Birollo, C.S. Superior General Missionaries of St. CharleslScalabrinians We are here for the opening session of a theological conference on migration, organized on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the visit of Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini, by the two North American Provinces of the Missionaries of St. Charles, the religious Congregation founded by Bishop Scalabrini to respond to the special needs of the emigrants. I wish to briefly share with you, this evening, what we Scalabrinians value as our Founder s legacy in the pastoral work for migrants SCALABRINI S APPROACH TO THE PHENOMENON OF EMIGRATION For Scalabrini, emigration is one of the aspects of the social question, a term that in Scalabrini s time, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, was used to refer to the conditions of the workers and of the poor. One of the characteristics of Scalabrini is the scientific approach toward the social phenomena and he combines it with the search for practical answers, structured and institutionalized, according to the needs identified in his research. Scalabrini recognizes that social facts usually are not either good or evil, but can be either one or the other, depending on the circumstances. Emigration is a natural right. An individual can seek one s well being anywhere in the world. In reality, when emigration is abandoned to itself without advice and without guidance, or when it is induced by unscrupulous agents, it is like a fever that slowly consumes the social organism. The practical conclusion drawn by Scalabrini is that there must be freedom to emigrate but not coercion to force or to induce people to emigrate. Emigration in almost all cases is not a pleasure but a necessity that cannot be avoided.... The immense majority is not fleeing from Italy because of unwillingness to work, but because there is no work. People are faced with a painful dilemma: either to steal or to emigrate. For the poor, the fatherland is the coun-

2 12 THEOLOGICAL MIGRATION CONFERENCE try that provides bread, especially when the land of their birth is known only through two hateful forms: taxation and military conscription. Even though Scalabrini does not possess the technical terminology of sociology and anthropology he describes the phenomenon that has brought the formation of today s multiethnic and multicultural societies. In his study of the phenomenon of migration he is fascinated by the results produced by emigration into the Americas. He points out that a process of fusions and adaptations takes place in which the various nationalities meet, intermingle, forge themselves anew and give origin to other peoples. Scalabrini is a man of faith and a bishop. Without confusing the levels of analysis, he confronts the socioeconomic and political vision of emigration with the values and convictions that come from his faith and his pastoral concerns. SCALABRINI S THEOLOGICAL VlSlON Scalabrini s vision of emigration is enlightened by his faith in the Lord who guides history as divine Providence: Emigration is a law of nature. The physical and the human world depend on this mysterious force, which stirs and mixes the elements of life without destroying them, which carries living organisms born in one place and scatters them throughout space, transforming and bringing them to perfection, thus renewing the miracle of creation at every moment. This description widens in the prophetic vision of the humanity which is guided by the Spirit: While races intermingle, through the noise of our machines, on top of all this restless work, of all these gigantic activities, and not without them, a much more ample, noble and sublime enterprise is in the making here on earth: the union in God through Jesus Christ of all the people of good will (New York Catholic Club, 1901). Scalabrini looks at emigration as a shepherd who wants to be faithful to the mission that has been entrusted to him. In Scalabrini the concept of mission is all embracing and derives directly from the concept of Incarnation: in the Son, made man, the Father loves the whole person, even the body, the flesh, the human soul. Now we are that flesh, those bones, we are that nature, we are a body with Christ and in Him and through Him we are made children of God, even more the same Son of God that prolongs God s presence in us (Pastoral letter, Lent 1878).

3 THE LEGACY OF BLESSED JOHN BAMIST SCALABRINI 13 PASTORAL RESPONSE From this theological perspective some important consequences are derived, both in the pastoral and also in the ecclesial field. Scalabrini s project of intervention in favor of the emigrants is global and complex. Scalabrini is concerned about the welfare of the poor and the workers and wants to intervene both where they come from (the causes that provoke emigration) and where they are going. He insists that it is necessary to give advice and guidance to those who are about to make the decision to emigrate, to accompany them to the ports of embarkation, assist them during the trip, and to help them in the time of insertion in the new environment. It is also necessary to declare an all-out war on the so-called emigration agents. Scalabrini called them merchants of human flesh; he also referred to them as those who smell the corpses. His intervention has two characteristic elements: first of all the effort to create an awareness of the problem and to gather the most ample consensus around this issue, calling on the clergy, the laity and all the people of good will because Charity knows no partisanship. The second element is the will to take into consideration all the aspects of the problem, as a whole, because, when we are dealing with emigration, religious, civil and national, public and private, cannot be separated without harm. In regard to the laws to regulate emigration, Scalabrini is contrary to generalized restrictions that he considers useless, unjust and harmful: useless because they would never be able to eliminate emigration; unjust because they would impede the free exercise of a human right and harmful because emigration would take other ways, falling more easily in the hands of unscrupulous persons. He therefore concludes: The important thing for a law is not to be liberal but to be good, and for me a good law is not one that is wider, but one that, based on justice, better provides for those needs for which it has been made. Scalabrini often repeated what an emigrant wrote to him from Brazil: Here we are like animals; we live and die without priests, teachers and doctors. Scalabrini added: these, the three forms under which civil society presents itself to the mind of the poor. In order to respond to the needs of the emigrants, Scalabrini, with the support of Pope Leo XIII, founded the Congregation of the Missionary priests

4 11 THEOLOGICAL MIGKAI ION CONFERENCE and brothers. He also promoted the involvement of lay people. In 1891, in his first Conference on Italian Emigration he stated: I founded two societies, one made up of priests, the other of lay people; one religious, the other lay; two societies to help and complement each other. The first is the Congregation of the Missionaries aiming especially at the spiritual welfare of our emigrants, the latter at their material welfare. The first attains its purpose by setting up churches, schools, orphanages, and hospitals, through priests united family- like by the religious vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, ready and willing to rush wherever they are needed, as apostles, teachers, doctors, nurses, according to the needs. The second society carries out its task by discouraging emigration when it is unwise, keeping an eye on the work of emigration agents, seeing to it that they do not violate the law, and, if everything else fails, counseling the emigrants and channeling them toward good destinations. In 1895 Scalabrini founded also a Religious Congregation of Sisters dedicated to service of the emigrants. SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SCALABRINI S APPROACH TO THE PASTORAL WORK FOR EMIGRANTS The objective of the pastoral work of Scalabrini is the evangelization of the poor and of the workers. He is concerned about the emigration of the poor classes: the farmers and laborers, the factory workers, the small craftsmen and merchants. Scalabrini, with the support of the Pope, addresses himself to his brother bishops, those from the country of origin of the emigrants, Italy, and those from the countries of destination, in the Americas. In the ecclesial prospective Scalabrini often compares the missionary work in the frontiers of Asia and Africa, where the Church invests its resources and people for the expansion of the faith, with the extreme necessity of the conservation of the faith of the millions of poor Catholics dispersed in the vast regions of the New World. It seems that Scalabrini is more inclined to think that the expansion of the Church will depend more on the human mobility rather than on the missio ad gentes. To the bishops of the countries of destination of the emigrants he com- municates his profound conviction that the goal of their pastoral attention to them should bring together the dispersed children of God into one family

5 THE LEGACY OF BLESSED JOHN BAPTIST SCALABRINI 15 and therefore the perfect communion and participation in the local Church, that would see itself enriched with a new life and new forms of Christian piety. This objective could be reached if the process of integration of the emigrants was encouraged but not forced. The pastoral care of the diocesan bishop for the emigrants is manifested when he establishes a pastoral relationship with these children of God who have arrived in his diocese by assigning to their care missionaries who are familiar with their language and their traditions. The missionaries would recreate that environment that the emigrants had left in their own countries and that would sustain them in their first impact with a world that was completely different. Scalabrini here combines the insights of someone who has a prolonged experience of care of souls among the poor. We recognize here Scalabrini the catechist and his exhortations to the Catholic mothers. For Scalabrini, faith is transmitted mostly through the parents, especially through the mothers, and is inseparably joined with the mother tongue, especially in the poor person who has not been able to obtain a formal education. A very apt element in the preservation of the faith is exactly the preservation of the language of origin. This is not the place to investigate what may be its mysterious reason, but daily experience tells us that as long as an individual, a family, or a whole community preserves its own language, it will not likely lose its own faith (Memorial p. 224). Scalabrini does not utilize the terms of the social sciences, as personal or ethnic identity, but he describes their content and role as an attentive observer. The affectionate care of the apostle of the emigrants consists therefore in a delicate work of transplanting, where a motherly sensitivity is needed in order that the roots of the transplanted may not dry up and, maintaining their strength, they may, little by little, reach out in the unfamiliar soil. We can therefore summarize the following intuitions of Scalabrini s pastoral heart: Attention to migrants culture: in its evangelizing attention toward the children of poverty and labor, the Church must respect the particular ethnic and linguistic cultures of migrants, precisely because culture is the normal way of living and conserving the faith, especially for people (such as migrants) who are culturally less sophisticated.

6 16 THEOL~CICAL MIGRATION CONFERENCE The "providential" view of the phenomenon of migration: Scalabrini realized that the children of poverty and labor, who in human and sociological terms seemed to be a mass of exploited people and failures, were in fact the builders of a new society and were the special place and instrument for the building up of the Kingdom - "the union of Christian peoples," as he called it. This is a prophetic view, which reads history not with the key of efficiency, appearance and the dominant economy, but with that of the wisdom of God, who uses what is not in order to put to shame what is. This "wisdom reading" of migration is the treasure that Scalabrini left to the Church. The "Pentecostal communion" among cultures, ethnic groups, languages and religions: Scalabrini wrote about this intuition to Pope Pius X one month before his death in After pastoral visits to the United States and Brazil, he realized that migration (including Italian migration) was entering a new phase; thus, the Church had the task of "smoothing" or "softening" cultures, helping them to enter into communion with one another. This is Scalabrini's spiritual testament, which he entrusted to his children and to the Church.