"Knowing full well that the Kingdom of God expresses itself through human realities and is built in their midst, we accompany people on the move worldwide."
Following the inspiration of Saint John Baptist Scalabrini, our missionary presence directly serves the multifaceted needs of communities in transit.
We provide dedicated pastoral care to migrant workers, expatriates, and transnational families. Through ethnic parishes, cultural chaplaincies, and welcoming transient shelters, we ensure that no one feels like an alien in the House of God, fostering community solidarity and cultural affirmation.
Seafarers endure prolonged isolation, perilous ocean voyages, and extreme physical strain. Through our Stella Maris centers, port chaplains board commercial vessels to offer sacramental care, communication lifelines to families back home, hospital visitation, and human rights advocacy for maritime crews.
For individuals and families forcibly displaced by war, persecution, or environmental crises, our ministries provide indispensable legal aid, dignified emergency shelter, trauma counselling, and research-backed advocacy to safeguard their human rights and support viable paths to permanent resettlement.
Confronting one of the darkest crimes of our age, Scalabrinians operate safe shelters and multi-disciplinary intervention teams for victims of human trafficking and forced labor. We provide holistic restoration, legal protection, vocational empowerment, and safe paths to societal re-integration.
Knowing full well that the Kingdom of God expresses itself through human realities and is built in their midst, we are able to discern the positive values that characterise the life of the migrants and represent their own peculiar contribution to the solidarity of all peoples and to universal brotherhood: namely, their longing for dignity, for participation, for justice, and for the salvation of the whole person.
At the same time, we hold in high esteem the spiritual heritage of thought, tradition, culture and religion the migrants bring along from their place of origin, as well as the heritage of values of the new place where they come to live. To appreciate these values and to channel them into the building up of the Kingdom of God, while taking into account the requirements of our international Congregation, we place a genuine missionary spirit at the very foundation of our formation and ministry.
This spirit makes us completely available not only for working outside our native country but also for acquiring a spiritual, psychological, and linguistic affinity with the migrants entrusted to our care, whatever their origin. On the practical level, the Congregation appreciates the natural homogeneity and acquired affinities of its members, recognizing it as pastorally effective to entrust the care of migrants to those who know their language, mentality, culture, and spiritual life.
“The evolution of the phenomenon of migration is being studied and made known in our Congregation through Centers of Study, Mass Media, Church Migration Offices and NGOs. Our advantage and our uniqueness as a Congregation are found in our geographical presence worldwide, in the Scalabrinian reading of migration and in our pastoral response.”
— 13th General Chapter, Final Document (n. 70 – 75)