Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Agenzia Fides) - A prayer Vigil in the evening of Sunday 6 May at the Casa Divin Maestro in Ariccia, Rome, opened the work of the 13th general assembly of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions PIME which has as its theme for reflection, Communion and Mission “ad extra” in the 3rd Millennium . The working paper prepared by a preparatory commission collects in four geographical areas, Asia-Oceania, Africa, America, Italy, observations and proposals offering a summary and paths for discussion on six main issues: evangelising, life in the circumscriptions, initial formation, formation and integral health, lay collaboration in evangelisation, the media. The working paper will be integrated with reports from Circumscription Superiors, from the Superior General, economic reports, other contributions and interventions in the assembly.
The first PIME nucleus, formed on 31 July 1850 at Saronno, Milan, and then mover to Milan, came from the great heart of Pius IX , who wished for Italy too to have its own Institute of secular clergy devoted to missionary activity. The "Seminario lombardo per le missioni estere" at the wish of another Pope, Pius XI, in 1926 was merged with the "Pontificio Seminario per le Missioni Estere", opened in Rome 1871 with similar characteristics to the one in Milan. From the outset both Seminaries aimed to send diocesan priests on mission ( the Seminario lombardo sent also lay men), without making them religious ( "Fidei Donum" a century earlier!), with the sole mission ad gentes, first announcement and planting of local Churches in mission territories entrusted to the care of Propaganda Fide. In over 150 years of history, with a limited number of missionaries (priests and lay people of consecrated life) never more than 700 (today 542), PIME laid the grounds from forty dioceses in ten different countries in Asia and elsewhere in the world. Today PIME missionaries are present in 15 all over the world, but mainly in Asia. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 8/5/2007; Righe 24; Parole 348)
