Concern for Migrants

Scalabrini’s attention for the migrants is not born all of a sudden nor is it an isolated preoccupation. Instead, it is a progressive awareness on the part of a spirit open to the sign of the times and moved by faith to compassion and to an active involvement in the problems of the society of his time. As a young priest and as a pastor, Bishop Scalabrini had taken

notice that the farmers of Valtellina and the weavers of the Como province were forced to escape hunger and unemployment. When he became a bishop, he registered the high number of people of his diocese that poverty was pushing abroad, especially from the Emilian Appenines. Besides, the railway station of Piacenza was a transit point for thousands of emigrants from the Veneto, Lombardy and Romagna regions directed to the port of Genoa, and their misery was a familiar heartrending scene.

Before such a painful and uninterrupted exodus and “before such a tearful situation,” Scalabrini wrote, “I have often asked myself: how can I find a solution.”⁷ He took action: “. . . I made mine the cry of sorrow of our poor expatriates, and I called public attention on the nefarious activity of the traffickers in human flesh....”⁸ The answer of Bishop Scalabrini is summed up in the first Rules for a Congregation of Missionaries for the Italian Colonies in America of 1888 where the purpose proposed is “to keep alive in the hearts of our emigrated compatriots the Catholic faith and to provide as far as possible their moral, civil and economic welfare.”⁹ Scalabrini plans a well integrated form of assistance that covers the port of departure, the voyage, the arrival and settlement in the country of destination. In this way, the migrant would be protected from abuses and suffering and helped to reach his objective not only of material success but also of human and spiritual development by preserving his religious faith and national identity in a providential plan that through the displacement and mixing of peoples prepares the union of all in Christ.

The operational strategy of Bishop Scalabrini to embody his vision moves along study, analysis and sensibilization of public opinion on one side, and, on the other, organization of projects and mobilization of persons to support them. For the first type of intervention, he undertook a series of conferences in the most important Italian cities and established a wide network of contacts and correspondence with persons that in any way were involved with the cause of migrants as were, for example: the Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, Ernesto Schiaparelli of the Association to Support Italian Missionaries; Giuseppe

Toniolo, who among several other initiatives was the founder of the Catholic Union for Social Studies; St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart; and Peter Paul Cahensly, founder of the St. Raphael’s Society in Germany. He authored or inspired and encouraged publications such as a series of pamphlets on emigration and the magazine L’emigrato italiano (The Italian Emigrant). The result had been the awareness on the part of important segments of Italian Catholicism of the seriousness and urgency of the emigration question and of the necessity to develop concrete proposals to solve it. The second way through which Bishop Scalabrini intervened had been the founding of the Congregations of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo for the Emigrants (1887), the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles (1895), and the St. Raphael’s Society for the Protection of Emigrants (1892). His vast correspondence shows that he daily guided these organizations in the multiplicity of religious and social initiatives they promoted in Italy and in the Americas. The direct dialogue that ensued with Church leaders in different countries had anticipated the idea of international pastoral coordination in the field of migrations.

The concrete structure Bishop Scalabrini envisioned for a worldwide coordination of the spiritual care of all uprooted people was presented in the proposal he submitted to Pope Pius X of a Commission for Catholic Migrants in the Roman Curia after seeing in North and South America the social and religious needs of European immigrants.

The writings and the projects of Bishop Scalabrini are marked by a sense of urgency to meet situations of such exploitation, human degradation, physical and moral pain, that did not allow the luxury of detailed planning or the waiting that all needed resources were available. The insight of the moment, the essence of the message, the conviction that Providence would bring to maturity the little seed thrown into the furrow of history, are the characteristics of Bishop Scalabrini’s style, together with patience and an iron will in pursuing the realization of his program as far as his energy would allow it. In particular, the writings concerning migrants – which make up this volume – reflect the spur-of-the-moment initiative, the polemics, the need to shake indifference, to reach first of all the heart and lead to action.¹⁰ Full paragraphs are repeated

almost literally from one document to another and it would not be reasonable to look for a meticulous and consistent precision of concepts. Bishop Scalabrini’s study and experience brought about an evolution of ideas ever closer to the phenomenon of migration in its continue change. There is, however, a framework in his thought that hinges on some precise convictions and that constitutes not so much a theory of migrations but an articulated and reasoned approach containing the key elements for its systematic understanding.