a) THE PRESENCE OF THE CHURCH

"Where people are  working and suffering, there is the Church"

The Church of Jesus Christ, which has sent her Gospel workers among the most barbarous peoples and most inhospitable regions, has not forgotten and will never neglect the mission God

entrusted to her, namely, to preach the Gospel to the children of poverty and labor.  She will always look with anxious heart on so many poor souls who, in forcible isolation, are losing the faith of their forebears and, with the faith, every sentiment of Christian and civil upbringing.  Yes, gentlemen, where people are working and suffering, there is the Church because the Church is the mother, friend, and defender of the people and will always have a word of comfort, a smile, a blessing for them.¹

"A new and consoling development is taking place in the Church on their behalf" 

As everyone can see, the Church is bringing about a new, marvelous, and consoling reawakening on behalf of the poor and abandoned.  Blessed many times over is the person who will be able to help the Church in this religious and social rebirth.  This is the time when ‑- in the words of the Apostle ‑- if one member rejoices, all the members rejoice; if one member suffers, all the other members come together to help it. 

If the past has been bleak, if, until yesterday, our brothers and sisters were left to themselves in the vast plains of America, in the Andes or the Cordilleras or the Rockies, on the banks of great lakes in the North, along the Plata, Orenoque, Amazon, or Mississippi Rivers, along the shores of the seas and in the forests, Christian charity and today's social standards now require that we put a stop to a deplorable state of affairs unworthy of a great and generous people. 

The challenge I lay down before the minds and hearts of the clergy and laity of Italy is great, noble, untried, glorious.  It makes room for the widow's mite as well as for the rich man's offering, for the unassuming work of calmer people as well as for the generous drive of more ardent spirits.²

"Unfortunate, truly unfortunate"

Inside me there still resounds the plaintive voice of a poor Lombard peasant who came to Piacenza two years ago from the remote Tibagy Valley in Brazil to ask me for a Missionary in the name of that large settlement.  "Father," he told me with a broken voice,

"if you only knew how much we have suffered!  How much we have wept at the bedside of our dear dying ones who were anxiously begging us for a priest ... and we were unable to get one!  Oh God, we can no longer live, we can no longer live like that!"  With unpolished yet eloquent language, the poor man went on to tell me about really heart-rending scenes.  I must confess that, never like at that moment, did I wish I still had the vigor of my youth.  Never like then did I regret the impossibility of changing the golden cross of the Bishop with the wooden cross of the Missionary so that I could hasten to help those unfortunate ones, truly unfortunate because, besides all the other dangers, they also risked the danger of falling into the abyss of despair.³

"We are here like animals"

At the Feb. 12, 1879, session of the House of Deputies, the Hon. Antonibon ‑- reporting some of the distressing news on the condition of our emigrants in America ‑- read a letter from a Venetian settler, who, by way of conclusion to a litany of woes, wrote: "We are here like beasts. We live and die without priests, without teachers, and without doctors."

During this past year I have received about one hundred similar letters from heads of families, imploring me to extend the protection and care of my Institute to them.  Not only were letters sent to me but also special messengers from the various regions of Brazil who had come to plead their cause more forcefully by word of mouth.  From those poor ungrammatical letters, embellished with illegible signatures, as well as from the moving words of their messengers, emerged the great need of priests and teachers, a need that was all the more desperate the more the settlements prospered.  All of them ended their pleas with the heart-rending words of the poor Venetian emigrant: "We are like animals.  We live and die without priests, without teachers, and without doctors" ‑- the three aspects of civil society, in the perception of the poor.

Well, then, with my charitable Institute I try precisely to meet these three great human needs:

‑       To keep alive in their hearts the faith of their forebears, and, with the immortal hopes of the afterlife rekindled, to cultivate and refine their moral sense since ‑- and we must not forget it ‑- fortunately our

people's only treatise on ethics is still the Ten Commandments.

‑       With the first rudiments of arithmetic, to teach also the mother tongue and some national history and thus keep alive in our distant brothers and sisters the flame of love of country, as well as the desire to see their country again.

‑       Finally, a bit of healing arts, by giving our missionaries some training during the months of novitiate on the use of the most effective and common medicines, on the way to concoct and administer them, and on setting up little pharmacies next to every residence of the missionaries.  In itself, this is not much.  But it is a lot when we consider there are no doctors or medicines in those immense plains of America, where, often enough, even when doctors and medicines are available, the people do not have the financial means to pay for them.⁴

"The religious and moral future will depend on how much religion and morality they will preserve"

Hence, the urgency to act is quite clear and appears even more so from the following observations:

Those little groups of cabins, presently spread out in a desert of sorts, will become flourishing towns and cities because of the natural population increase and because of this emigration tide that rises higher and higher by the day.  What will happen then?  It is easy to foresee that in a few years we shall have in the vast plains of the Americas a new Italy, perhaps rich in material goods but poor in the riches of the spirit.  Or, more precisely, we shall have a society consistent with the direction we will have given it at the start. 

The first impressions are always the most persistent and lasting; and the first traditions are the ones that give a family, a city, a settlement its special characteristics.  History gives us innumerable examples.

We must also consider the fact that, by nature, our fellow citizens are eminently docile and therefore easily adapt to the conditions of places and peoples where divine Providence leads them.

The religious and moral future of our communities in America, therefore, will depend on how much religion and morality is preserved by these first centers of population.  Will they be inspired by civic and Christian sentiments?  If their descendants will be civic minded and Christian, those who will join them later on from Italy will

more or less spontaneously have to adapt to the traditions of faith and piety they find implanted there.  Instead, if they are abandoned, they will grow up like savages; and even those who arrive after them will themselves become like savages. 

Furthermore, the tendency of our emigrants to settle in communities must not be overlooked because it makes the task of those who must guide them less difficult.  To overlook this tendency ‑- now that it is a question of choosing the sites of future cities and of stamping them with a religious and Italian character on which their future prosperity and importance will depend ‑- would be an unpardonable error.  That identity must be stamped on them immediately.  I believe any delay will be fatal!  Such an identity will be a bond uniting them to their distant motherland.  In fact, sharing in the same religious and patriotic values is much more important for creating the unbreakable unity of a nation than do material interests.⁵

"Heroes of evangelization"

Gentlemen, after so much talk about emigration and emigrants during these past ten or twelve years, how much has been accomplished?  It would not be true to say that what has been accomplished is as much as could or should have been accomplished.

Thank God, various associations of religious and civil assistance have appeared and by spontaneous selection divided up this new field of activity. 

I will not mention my work.  Since you are quite familiar with it, I don't want to take advantage of your patience and kindness.  I will only say that with confidence in God and his Providence I undertook the difficult task of urging people of good will to try something also in Italy especially in the area of religious assistance.  I thought to myself: if the clergy provides heroes who go off to preach the Gospel to uncivilized peoples, surely it will not refuse to provide generous young men who ‑- with less danger but with no less hardship ‑- will go out to assist our countrymen, especially those in the Americas, among whom they have friends and relatives perhaps, neighbors for sure.  To dry the tears of a moment, the rich and the poor of Italy have often vied with each other in works of charity.  The former gave abundantly from their surplus, the latter from their need.  What will they not do when they realize there are tears to be dried, tears that have been

shed for many years and will continue to be shed for generations to come unless somebody does something?  What will they not do when they realize there is a shame to be removed that makes us look uncaring and renders us contemptible in the eyes of foreigners? 

Very soon I realized I was right.  Not only did I meet with applause and praise, but ‑- most importantly ‑- with receptive hearts, generous spirits, and vigorous wills ready for action to the point of sacrifice.⁶

"The beneficent influence of the Cross of Christ"

Churches, convents, Christian schools, orphanages, and hospitals are sprouting up everywhere.  The cross of Christ consoles the emigrants, encourages them, and sustains their religious principles.  It preserves the emigrants from the dangers of corruption and apostasy, which, little by little, would lead them to deny not only Christianity but their duties to the motherland as well.⁷

"For the Church a fountain of incalculable benefits"

In my opinion, the formidable problem of emigration on which Governments are working, almost always in vain, is destined by divine Providence to earn the Holy See immense social prestige and become a fountain of untold consolations and of incalculable benefits for the Church.  No one who can discern the signs of the times can have any doubt about this.  I say this so that we may be firmly convinced that to solve this problem, as it deserves, we should spare no sacrifice.⁸