EUROPE/ITALY - Fidei Donum Missionaries Survey: 566 priests and 114 lay Italians on mission service, two thirds are in Latin America

Friday, 21 September 2007

Rome (Agenzia Fides) - “Il Movimento dei Fidei Donum. Tra memoria e futuro” is the title of a book in Italian published by EMI and compiled by Dario Nicoli, docent at the Catholic University of Brescia, which was presented during a recent National Meeting of Directors of Mission Centres on the 50 years of Fidei Donum in Italia. It emerged from the survey that a desire to live the priestly preference for the poor and to make a radical choice in one's vocation are the reasons which prompt this sort of mission. “The Fidei Donum missionaries we met - Nicoli says - have an ability to listen which means relate and to understand with regard to the context in which they work and also less attachment to things, revealing that they draw nourishment from the Other who regenerates, renews, revives one's vocation”.
Today there are 566 Fidei Donum Italian missionaries in service, 4% of Italian missionaries and 1.6% diocesan priests and coming from 113 different dioceses. Fidei Donum lay people with a regular CEE convention number 222, including 114 who are married and they come from 42 dioceses. The total number of Fidei Donum missionaries is 788, 5.5% of all Italian missionaries all over the world. A figure quite stable in recent years also with an increase in lay people, often whole families compared to a lower number of priests. More than two thirds of these Fidei Donum missionaries are sent to Latin America: 225 priests in Brazil alone.
“Fifty years on - says Mgr Giuseppe Pellegrini, director of the national office for missionary cooperation among the Churches and national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the introduction of the book - the Fidei Donum experience has must to say to our communities. If in the past mission could be seen as a “gift” to young Churches in need of personnel and means, today it is ever more evident that communion is an indispensable category for orienting cooperation among the Churches”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 21/9/2007; righe 26, parole 352)


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