Msgr. Giovanni Battista Scalabrini

Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, bishop of Piacenza - Italy, founder of the two Scalabrinian congregations , was born on 8 June 1839 in Como, Italy. At 18 years he entered seminário, being ordained a priest in 1863 and consecrated Bishop in 1876.
During his life, he worked so effectively in a variety of reality and pastoral areas, but it was his involvement in favour of migrants that made his work and his holiness known throughout the world.

Yet, his sensitivity to the tragedy experienced by migrant families can not be separated from his attention to all the poor he met, for example, to the prisoners, the sick and the deaf and dumb.

For Scalabrini it was the task of the Church to intervene with the governments and political groups, whenever the interests of the poor were at stake. In the pastoral letter that he wrote to the diocese in Piacenza in 1882 he said it was "necessary to participate in public life, using all lawful means, for the triumph of truth and justice".

This willingness and openness to new social issues led him to approach the plight of migrants and, simultaneously, to put in motion to serve those in need whom he met on his way. In a pastoral letter of 1891 that still impels us to the mission he said:
"We have to leave the temple, if we want to do a healthy action in the temple!".

The sensitivity for migrants was stimulated in 1880, in the railway station in Milan, from the tragic conditions of the poor immigrants that were waiting for the train to Genoa, from where they would be embarked for the Americas. So the bishop of Piacenza describes them: "Not without tears, had they said goodbye to their village, to which many sweet memories tied them, but without regret they were leaving home because they knew it only under the two odious forms, military service and taxes, and because for the disinherited the homeland is the land that gives the bread, and there far away they hoped to find bread, less scarce if not less hard-earned".

In looking for adequate responses to the migrants' sufferings, Scalabrinis interventiona are nemberless: studies and publications, action to awaken the Church in Italy to the migration phenomenon, bills on italian emigration, foundation of the two Congregations the Missionary Fathers (1887) and Missionary Sisters (1895) of St. Charles Borromeo, the institution of Società San Raffaele italiana (1888), the involvement of the Sisters of Santa Francesca Cabrini and of the Apostle Sisters of the Sacred Heart for the service among the migrants, etc...

In order to know the situation in which the italian emigrants lived, Scalabrini, despite his illness and age (62), went between 1901 and 1904, to the United States, Argentina and Brazil. In such travels he wanted to visit the communities of Italian emigrants, despite the many difficulties of transport at the time. His commitment was of great support to migrants, but also to the wotk started by the Fathers and the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles.

In a letter to Pope Leone XIII in 1901, we find a kind of report of the work done, with complete evaluation, motivation and hope: "If i look at the work done among grat difficulties i have reasons to rejoice in the Lord, but if i go deep down into my spirit i find but regret for all the good i haven't done or i haven't done well. Of one thing i can assure you, Blessed Father, thet is, in all of my actions i haven't aimed at anything but the glory of Good and the salvation of the souls commendet to me".

His prophetism, his charity, his love for migrants and his teachings give us an example of a holy bishop and model for our days. He died on 01 June 1905. He was beatified under the title of Father of Migrants by Pope John Paul II on 9 November 1997.