A Note From

Rev. Joe Koyickal

Fr. Leandro Fossa from the Missionaries of St. Charles - Scalabrinians will be visiting our Tri-Parish Community next weekend. Below is some information about the Mission. Please put any donations in a white envelope marked “Mission” with your name & envelope number.

The Missionaries of St. Charles - Scalabrinians, is a world-wide Catholic Religious Community of Priests and Brothers, founded in Piacenza, Italy in 1887 by Saint John Baptist Scalabrini, with the specific mission to assist in the spiritual and social needs of migrants and refugees.

The Scalabrinians care for migrants and refugees in a variety of ways: socially, culturally and spiritually. Its missionaries are present in more than 30 nations around the world. They are in charge of shelter homes for refugees or migrants in transit or deported persons, seamen's centers, villages for elderly migrants, and centers for migration studies. They publish newspaper and magazines and conduct radio and television programs. They run formation houses for religious and lay. They are also members of migration committees of Bishop's Conferences. Many of them are engaged in preaching missions to migrant communities, teaching, or running multi-cultural parishes and ethnic missions.

The Scalabrinians help preserve and cherish the migrant's family traditions and religious heritage, and help them integrate into a new society with different customs.

There are half-a-dozen Scalabrinian shelters, Casas del Migrante, along the Mexican-US border and the Mexican-Guatemala-El Salvador borders. The shelters provide

room and board, social help, medical aid, legal consul and spiritual assistance to men, women and children who arrive at the shelters in desperate need. The shelters provide

assistance to some 40,000 migrants per year.

The mission in Guatemala City and San Salvador serve thousands of migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and other Central and South American countries that are

suffering from wars, poverty, political oppression and natural disasters.

Young families arrive daily with tattered clothing, hungry and abused. They arrive filled with bewilderment of the unknown ahead, untold hardships and hesitant to trust anyone. Yet their eyes and expressions speak of determination and a hope for a brighter future. The Scalabrinians are there to welcome them, offer comfort, shelter, food, clothing, God's love through spiritual ministry and the celebration of the Sacraments and reassurance that the Scalabrinians will be there to help them start a new life.

The money raised from the mission appeals will benefit the Scalabrinian shelters, missions and seminarians in Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.

You can also visit the following sites for more information

www.scalabrinimissionoffice.org (Mission Office)

www.scalabrinians.org (St. John the Baptist Province)

www.scalabriniani.org (General Office in Rome)