Servants of Charity

Dear Confreres, 

Pope St. John Paul II says, “Let us remember the past with gratitude, live the present with enthusiasm and look forward to the future with confidence.”
The month of July becomes a special month that invites us to remember our roots & origin and to remain thankful and to rediscover our roots in order to incarnate it and to renew it in the present. This month of July invites us to be thankful to our forerunners who brought the message of Christ to us, Christians and Guanellians in particular.
When I write Christians in general, I invite you first to think of St. Mary Magdalene whose feast (Pope Francis elevated her celebration from memorial to feast) is celebrated in the Catholic Church on July 22nd. I mentioned first about St. Mary Magdalene because it was she who was the first messenger and who announced the Lord's resurrection to the Apostles (Mulieris Dignitatem n. 16).
She is an example of a true and authentic evangelizer that is an evangelist who announces the central joyful message of Easter (Collect for July 22nd and the new preface). On the one hand, she has the honor to be the first witness (prima testis) of the Lord's resurrection, the first who saw the empty tomb and the first to hear the truth about His resurrection. On the other hand, precisely because she was an eyewitness to the risen Christ, she was also the first one to bear witness to Him before the Apostles. She went and announced to the disciples 'I have seen the Lord' and she told them that He had said these things to her (Jn 20,17-18). St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor used the term to call her “Apostle of the Apostles (Apostolorum Apostola)”.
Secondly, we remain thankful to St. Thomas, the Apostle who is believed strongly to have brought the faith to our Indian land, especially to the Southern parts of India in 52 AD. The history of Christianity in India is as old as the history of the universal church. We are all products of his message of faith. The tomb of Thomas is the ‘womb of Christianity in India' and without St. Thomas, Christianity would not have come to India so early. The mission of St. Thomas is endorsed by first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his “An Autobiography” who is of the view that Christianity came to India as early as the first century after Christ, long before Europe turned to it and established a fair hold in South India. Nothing is incredible in the feasibility of the visit of St. Thomas in South India.
Thirdly, we remain thankful to our forefathers who played a vital role in bringing the Guanellian Charism, Spirituality and Mission to our Indian land 35 years ago such as Don Tito Credaro, Don Domenico Saginario (who died in Manila on July 11) and Fr. John Bosco, our first Indian Guanellian priest (who passed away May 27th and whose memorial Mass we will celebrate on July 5, 2021). It is good that we revisit the pages of our Guanellian history on Indian soil.
At the beginning of the 1980s the Guanellian congregation went through a difficult moment. The process of reviewing the Constitutions required by the Vatican Council II was on, and the 12th General Chapter had given clear indications that the congregation was to review all her Works to give them a new (and reduced) dimension. At that point, the then General Superior, Fr. Olimpio Giampedraglia, suddenly fell sick with cancer and, after some months of a real Calvary of suffering, died at the beginning of December 1980. The 13^th General Chapter was called in July 1981 to elect the new superior and council and to see what to do about the new Constitutions. This was a chapter of substance and ideas. Few decisions were taken, but there was an important and deep reflection, and definitions and ideas about the congregation's Charism and mission were given. The fundamental contributions of Frs. Beria, Pellegrini, Saginario, Credaro, Minetti produced documents that would become the foundation of the following years' work, until 1984-85 when the Special Chapter approved the new Constitutions. Before closing this chapter of “principles and ideas”, a few practical motions were seen, which had been presented by some confreres. Among the approved ones, there was the following: The Chapter Assembly points out for the General Government, as an element of its program, the possibility to take our Guanellian presence in some other Country where poverty is joined with vocations fecundity. (Charitas n.190 (1982) p. 22)
It was just an impulse to move on, and later it was used to open the mission in Mexico. Yet, an observation is interesting: in spite of internal problems such as the fact of those who are in our Institute as in others – were abandoning religious and priestly life, and the decreasing vocations in Italy, in spite of the widespread need to reduce the confreres' workload to allow the communities to “stop and think” about the new Constitutions, the Chapter wanted to keep a door open to the expansion of the Charism. The motion doesn't include any motivation for this directive, which is included “as an element of its program”, but only two criteria: poverty and the possibility of persons managing (local vocations).
Soul and fire of this expansion movement was Fr. Domenico Saginario, “homeland missionary” of our congregation. He spent almost the whole of his priestly life in Rome, first as a teacher and then rector of the theological seminary, later as provincial superior, general councillor, and again provincial superior. Only towards the end of his life did he get permission to go to Manila in the Philippines, where he died suddenly at age eighty, almost on the eve of the Founder's canonization.
He was the one who gave the impulse to the first “long jump” of the congregation, towards India. A good theologian, he had a very clear idea of what was the real meaning of expansion. It was not simply a matter of going for a mission, i.e. going to a new place and start doing good according to the Guanellian style and tradition. The matter was to set up an implantatio: going to a new place and transplant the Charism, i.e. explain by words, actions, life, to some members of the local population St. Guanella's perceptions and intuitions, our style of work and organization, the spirit of our personal and community life, so that they could make it their own, take it up and carry it on.
At a distance of one hundred years from the first House at Como, on April 6, 1986 came a telegram for Fr. Domenico Saginario from India, specifically from the city of Madurai that announced the arrival in Rome of a young Indian named Arokiasamy John Bosco, accompanied by Father Stephen Fernando, a priest in Tamil Nadu. Divine providence enabled Fr. Stephen Fernando to meet the first young, John Bosco already advanced in his studies and formation at the Claretian Fathers. With the permission of his superiors, he agreed to join our congregation, and then worked for the foundation of the first home in India. An important event in the origins of our mission in India was the journey made by Don Tito Credaro in July of that year, 1986, accompanied Bro. John Bosco himself. They started on the evening of July 2nd and arrived the next day in Bombay, July 3rd, the feast of St. Thomas, patron saint of India.
With the sweat of our forefathers, our congregation has been implanted in our country and we are thankful to them. We, the descendants, continue this journey with a vision and dream to fulfill the mission and vision of the Founder in our province. We learn from St. Mary Magdalene, St. Thomas and from our forefathers to preach the message of faith to the generations to come. I wish you all the best for the month of July with the words of Theodore Roosevelt...
“The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.”

Fr. Ronald J, SdC

Provincial Superior