PART FIVE

 

MAN OF THE MIGRANTS  AND FOR THE MIGRANTS

 

 

 

Bishop Scalabrini faces the dramatic problem of mass emigration that had exploded in Italy at the beginning of his episcopate with the heart of the shepherd who sees his flock being dispersed and feels the need to fulfill the mission of the Church, sent to gather into one the dispersed children of God.

The Apostle to the Emigrants studies the phenomenon of emigration in all its aspects: its magnitude, its causes, its human, social and religious consequences.  While denouncing  injustice and oppression, he nevertheless is also able to discern God’s plan in all this.  And so he discovers the Church’s mission to the emigrants and the best way to fulfill her mission of evangelization and human development on their behalf.

He takes it upon himself to give a concrete answer to the needs of the migrants by founding two missionary Congregations for persons dedicated to the mission by religious consecration, namely, a Congregation for men and another one for women.

The evangelizing mission is rounded out by the work of protection and human development entrusted to lay people, especially to the St. Raphael Society

 

 

1. EMIGRATION SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF SCALABRINI

 

The sight of departing emigrants at the Milan railroad station and the pleas of his diocesan people emigrated to America challenge the apostolic heart of the Bishop of Piacenza.  Emigration is one of the most important and significant events of contemporary Italian life.  The numbers of people involved are enormous, and there is a permanency to the phenomenon because of inescapable financial needs.

A need presupposes a right, and this right cannot be denied by the State or by centers of power.  On the contrary, they must ensure freedom of emigra­tion, but not the freedom “to make people emigrate” ‑- which brings about speculation and exploitation.

Emigrants, unaccompanied and unprotected, are exposed to “infinite evils, both material and moral” and become “an easy prey to speculation.”  Abandoned to themselves, they risk losing their cultural and religious identity.

Instead, if emigration is well guided and assisted, it can become “an instrument of that divine Providence that presides over human destiny and, even through catastrophes, guides it toward the goal, which is the perfection of man on earth and the glory of God in heaven.”  In the plan of divine Providence, in fact, emigration is destined to develop “the unity of all people of good will in God through Jesus Christ.”

 

 

a) THE MAGNITUDE AND THE CAUSES

 

 “They were emigrants”

 

Quite a few years ago, in Milan, I witnessed a scene that left me with profound sadness.

As I walked through the station, I saw the vast waiting room, the side por­ticoes, and the adjacent piazza filled with three or four hundred poorly clad people, separated into different groups.  Their faces, bronzed by the sun and furrowed by the premature wrinkles of deprivation, reflected the inner turmoil convulsing their hearts at that moment.  There were old men bent with age and labor, young men in the prime of manhood, women pulling along or carrying their little ones, boys and girls, all drawn together by the same desire, all heading toward a common goal.

They were emigrants.  They had come from the various provinces of Northern Italy and were waiting with trepidation for the train that would take them to the shores of the Mediterranean, whence the steamer would carry them to far-off America, where they hoped to find a less hostile fate, a land less unresponsive to their labors.       

These poor souls were leaving, some sent for by relatives who had preceded them on this voluntary exile; others, without knowing precisely where they were heading, pulled by that powerful instinct that impels birds to migrate.  They were going to America where ‑-  they had heard many times ‑- there was well paid employment for anyone with strong arms and good will.

With tears in their eyes, they had bid farewell to their native village, to which they were bound by so many tender memories.  But, without regret, they were preparing to leave their country which they had grown to know only through two despised realities: taxes and the military draft.  For a destitute person the place that gives him bread becomes his country.  Far, far away, these emigrants hoped to find bread, less scarce but no less hard-earned.

I left there deeply moved.  A flood of melancholy thoughts brought a lump to my throat.  Who can imagine ‑- I thought to myself ‑- the accumulated privations and misfortunes making such a painful decision seem so sweet to them!  How many disap­pointments does the future hold in store for them, how many new heartaches?  How many will succeed in the struggle for survival?  How many will succumb in the turmoil of the cities or the solitude of uninhabited plains?  Though securing food for the body, how many will be without food for the soul, which is no less necessary than the former, and will lose the faith of their forebears in a materialistic way of life?

Ever since that day, my thoughts have often turned to those unfortunate people.  That scene always reminds me of another one, no less desolate, unseen, but discernible in the letters of friends and the reports of travelers.  I picture the poor wretches landing in a strange land, among people who speak a language they do not under­stand, easy victims of inhuman exploitation.  I see them moistening with their sweat and tears an unyielding ground that exudes disease-bearing miasmas.  I see them, broken by labor, consumed with fever, sighing in vain for the skies of their distant motherland and the age-old poverty of their family home, finally dying without the consolation of their dear ones, without the word of faith to point out to them the reward God has promised to the good and the forlorn.  And those who win out in the cruel struggle for survival?  Alas!  Isolated, as they are, they forget all supernatural notions, all precepts of Christian morality.  Day by day, they lose all sense of piety since it is not nourished by pious practices.  Instead, they allow brute instincts to replace more noble aspirations.

Faced with this lamentable situation, I have often asked myself: how can it be remedied?  Every time I happen to see in the papers some government circular warning the authorities and the public against certain speculators who carry out veritable raids of white slaves, sending them ‑- unsuspecting instruments of greed ‑- far away from their country toward a mirage of large and easy profits, and whenever from letters of friends or travelers’ accounts I read that Italians are the pariahs among emigrants, that they do the meanest kinds of work ‑- as if there could be meanness in work ‑- that our own countrymen are the most abandoned and hence the least respected, that thousands upon thousands of our brothers and sisters live without the protection of their distant motherland, without the comfort of a friendly word, as objects of exploitation often unpunished, then I confess that I, too, blush with shame.  I feel humiliated as a priest and as an Italian, and I ask myself again: what can be done for them?

Just a few days ago a distinguished young traveler brought me greetings from several families from the mountains of Piacenza, now living in camps on the banks of the Orinoco River: “Tell our Bishop that we always remember his advice.  Tell him to pray for us and to send us a priest because here we live and die like animals....”  That message from my far-off children sounded like a rebuke.[1]

 

 

“One of the most important facts in the history of modern Italy”

 

One of the most important facts in the history of modern Italy is the emigration of its people: important for the number of people who are affected, for the social problems it gives rise to, and for the economic evils of which it is a symptom. 

According to statistical data, Italian emigrants living in the American Republics total over 2 million: more than 1 million in the Republics of the South, of which more than 400 thousand in Brazil alone, the rest in the vast regions of the Americas, especially in the North.  New York City alone has 85,000.  During the decade 1880‑1890, 2 million people left Italy: 1 million temporary emigrants ‑-  a veritable ebb and flow of human beings that provides the European labor market with our intelligent and hard working manpower and brings honor and money back to Italy ‑- and 1 million permanent emigrants, namely, people who cross the ocean in the mostly vain hope of return­ing, spreading throughout the young American republics, in the North and the South, in the largely populated cities, in the deserted “pampas” and unexplored forests, bringing everywhere their appreciated and esteemed activity (...).

These figures speak for themselves.  They state clearly and eloquently that, during the two-year period 1887‑1888, more people left Italy than from France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and Switzerland put together; that our emigration is four times higher than Russia’s; three times higher than that of Germany, which also has a very substantial emigration of its own; superior by a few thousand to that of the United Kingdom, which has very flourishing colonies and commercial interests through­out the world.[2]

 

 

“A phenomenon that has all the characteristics of a permanent fact”

 

The figures are shocking.  However, gentlemen, it seems that the phenome­non of emigration has not yet reached its peak because, despite the strin­gent conditions laid down in the law enacted two years ago to restrain the activity of emigration agents; despite the disillusionments and cries of sorrow that, now and then, reach us from across the ocean, to our anger and shame; finally, notwithstanding the Government’s prohibitions, the sad exodus is still going on.  Gentlemen, the fact is that Italian emigration has increased and is still increasing because of our country’s poor conditions, especially agricultural, and that it has been stimulated and is still being stimulated beyond all proportions by emigration agents and by the need for manpower resulting from the emancipation of the slaves in Brazil.  It does, however, fulfill a real need of the Italian people and is commensurate with the annual population increase.  So we are not dealing with a temporary phenomenon but with one that has all the characteristics of a permanent fact.  Italy is a nation with the largest annual population increase.  It increases at a rate of 11‑12 per thousand and is surpassed only by Holland which has a 13-per-thousand population increase of births over deaths. 

This is why, despite mass emigration, the population of Italy is increas­ing and why, in a few years, its beautiful cities and towns will reach their maximum density. 

According to reliable projections, if the population increases as fast as during the past twenty years, in a century there will be 100 million Ital­ians.  Even allowing for the possibility that, through internal migration, Italy could accommodate another 10 million people within its national boundaries and thus reach a population of 40 or 50 million (which is how many Italy could feed if all the Regions had the same population density as Lombardy), there will still be another 50 million people who will spread around the world in the coming century, driven by an irresistible force, namely, the struggle for survival: 50 million people, gentlemen, scattered around the world like leaves driven by a gale![3]

 

 

“Emigration is a natural fact and an inescapable necessity”

 

Emigration is a natural and providential phenomenon.  It is a safety valve given by God to our troubled society.  It is a saving force that is far more powerful than all the moral and material restraints devised by legis­lators to ensure public order and to safeguard the life and property of its citizens.  We all know the proverb: Mala suadens fames (hunger leads to crime).  Who could hold in line a nation convulsed by the pangs of hunger, with no hope of finding its daily bread elsewhere? 

For people who see the suffering caused by emigration and blithely ask: “Why are so many people leaving?” there is a very simple answer.  In most cases, emigration is not a pleasure but an inescapable necessity.  Of course, among the emigrants there are some bad individuals, who are vagrant or depraved; but they are a minority.  The vast majority, not to say all, of those who emigrate to far-off America do not fit that description.  They are not fleeing from Italy because they don’t like work but because there isn’t any.  They just don’t know how they and their families can make ends meet.

One day a wonderful man, an exemplary Christian, from a little mountain village where I was making my pastoral visitation, came to see me and to ask for my blessing and a memento for himself and his family on the eve of their departure for America.  When I demurred, he countered with this simple but distressing dilemma: “Either you steal or you emigrate.  I am not allowed to steal nor do I want to, because God and the law forbid it.  But in this place there is no way I can earn a living for me and my children.  So what can I do?  I have to emigrate: it’s the only thing left. . . .”  I didn’t know what to answer.  With a full heart, I blessed him and entrusted him to the protection of God.  But once more I became convinced that emigration is a necessity, a heroic and ultimate cure one has to accept, just as a sick person accepts painful surgery to avoid death.

Religion and emigration ‑- these are the only two means for saving society from a great catastrophe in the future: one by channeling surplus population toward other continents, the other by soothing with comforting hopes the desperate sorrow of those poor people.[4]

 

 

b) EMIGRATION IS A NATURAL RIGHT

 

 

“A sacred right”

 

Those who would like to put a stop or a limit to emigration for patriotic or economic reasons and those who, because of a mistaken idea of freedom, want emigration left to itself, without direction or guidance, are either not using their heads or, in my opinion, are reasoning egoistically and insensi­tively.  In fact, by blocking emigration, we are violating a sacred human right; and by leaving it to itself, we are making emigration ineffectual.  The former forget that human rights are inalienable, that hence a person can seek his fortune wherever he so desires.  The latter forget that emigra­tion is a centrifugal force, which, if well directed, can also become a very powerful centripetal force.  Moreover, emigration brings relief to those who stay behind because of reduced manpower competition and new commercial outlets.  But emigration is also a great boon because it creates new spheres of influence and brings back home, in a thousand different ways, the treas­ures of human resources temporarily withdrawn from the nation (...).

A theoretical debate on whether emigration is good or bad is a waste of time at this point.  For my purpose, the important thing is that emigration exists.  But during the research I undertook to gather the statistical data and facts for this humble work of mine and also during my conversations with friends, I came to realize that there are a lot of fuzzy ideas in this field, not only among the middle class and among private citizens but also among journalists and public figures.  So I came to the conclusion that my observations are not at all out of place.

More than others, the owners of lands from which peasants are emigrating in greater numbers are worried by this sudden manpower shortage, which brings about decent salary raises for the remaining workers.  So the owners have voiced their grievances with the Government.  Through their elected represen­tatives and associations, they have called for measures “to cure and limit this moral illness, this desertion, which deprives the nation of manpower and wealth, violates agreements with farmhands and leaves behind laziness and insubordination, with no gain for the emigrants because, without capital and education, peasants will always and everywhere be proletarians.  The misery they try to escape by fleeing the country will haunt them like their own shadow, a misery made even more acute by new needs and isola­tion” (Parliamentary Proceedings, Session of February 22, 1869).

As anyone can easily guess, these reasons and proposals are motivated more by the interests of the well-to-do who stay behind than by the needs of the poor people who are forced to leave.  If the Government were to listen to, and let itself be guided by, these proposals, it would do something useless, unjust, and harmful.  Useless, because it will never be able to stop emigration; unjust, because every intervention that hinders the free exercise of a right is unjust and oppressive; harmful, because emigration would find an outlet other than the normal one of our ports, as happened every time the Govern­ment, out of an ill-conceived patriotic spirit, made emigration more diffi­cult.[5]

 

 

“Emigration must be spontaneous”

 

If the emigration agents were, as the Hon. De Zerbi seems to think, just simple intermediaries who acted as trusted agents between the shipping companies and the emigrants and restricted their work to giving information on sailing schedules and formalities and if the agencies were just branches of the central shipping offices, there would be no problem.  Their work, though superfluous most of the time (since the interested parties could easily get this information on the street corners or at the stores), would not be harmful either.  In fact, sometimes their work might even be useful to the emigrants.  Even if the agents did a bit of coaxing to sway the hesitant by depicting to the poor ‑- tired of their misery ‑- the fresh, peaceful brooks of America, like those that in Dante’s Inferno made Master Adam go into ecstasy, it would not be the end of the world.  One could close an eye and say with Manzoni: you poor little ragamuffin, you are not the one who will destroy Milan.

But permission to make enlistments is something quite different from all this.  If the agents were doing this when it was forbidden by government regulations, imagine if they will not take advantage of it when the law will give them this right!  As a natural consequence, the catastrophes deplored in the past will increase in proportion to the freedom granted because, on the one hand, past experience is no match for people’s insatiable thirst for gain; and, on the other, uninformed people either don’t know the fate of those who preceded them or hope to be luckier than they.

The penalties laid down by the new law for emigration agents are severe and this is good.  They will never be too severe for those who, more vile than thieves and more vicious than murderers, push so many unfortunate people to ruin.  How many of these poor people, torn from their homes by false promises, crossed the ocean to settle in inhospitable lands, where they wrestled with a thousand insurmountable difficulties and considered themselves lucky if, at the end, they found a piece of land on which to die in peace!  How many, abandoned on desert shores without clothes and food, were lucky enough to return, with despair in their hearts, to their little native village![6]

 

 

“Freedom of emigration, not freedom to coerce it”

 

I believe in freedom of emigration, not freedom to coerce it, because, while emigration is good when free, it is bad when coerced.  If spontaneous, it is good because it is one of the great laws of divine Providence ruling over the destinies of peoples and their economic and moral progress.  It is good because it is a social safety valve.  It opens up the flowery paths of hope and sometimes of riches to the poverty-stricken and civilizes people through contact with other laws and other customs.  It brings the light of the Gospel and Christian civilization to barbarians and idolaters.  It ennobles human destiny by broadening the concept of motherland beyond the physical and political boundaries, making the whole world man’s motherland.

If coerced emigration is bad because it substitutes true need with the fever of instant gain or with an ill-conceived spirit of adventure.  Instead of helping and relieving the situation, it becomes an evil and a danger because, by unnecessarily depopulating the motherland  beyond measure, it creates more uprooted and disillusioned people.  It is bad, finally, because it deviates emigration from its natural channels, which are the most effective and least harmful ones.  Experience teaches, in fact, that this kind of emigration is the cause of great evils that can and must be prevented by a provident civil government.[7]

 

 

c) THE CONSEQUENCES

 

“How bitter is the bread of the emigrant”

 

The dangers connected with this type of emigration are numberless, and so are the evils connected with it. 

Ten years ago, when I gave heed to the cry of distress of our poor emi­grants and wrote a pamphlet that had a profound echo in the hearts of all people of good will, galvanizing the thoughts and activities of people of all classes, I had no idea of the untold evils and dangers our poor emigrants are confronted with.  Everything, gentlemen, everything works against the emigrant!  His troubles often begin before he leaves his poor home, in the person of an emigration agent who, with promises of easy riches, convinces him to emigrate and then sends him wherever it serves the agent’s interests and not where it is best for the emigrant.  Along the journey, which often turns into tragedy, the emigrant is shadowed by these very same evils.  Then, upon his arrival in disease-infested areas, he finds these evils in the jobs for which he often is not fit, under bosses made inhuman either by an insatiable greed for money or by the habit of regarding workers as inferior beings.  These evils multiply a thousand times when evil-minded people try to ensnare the emigrants in foreign countries where they are unfamiliar with language and customs and are condemned to a state of isolation that is often the death of body and soul. 

I could cite many instances showing how wet with tears and bitter to the taste was the bread of the emigrants, of those unfortunate souls, who attracted either by vain hopes or false pro­mises, found an Iliad of woes, abandonment, hunger, and not rarely death where they had believed they would find a paradise.  They had dreamed of an Eldorado, made attractive by a mirage born of need, not realizing that in an instant simoun, the violent wind of reality, scatters the enchanted cities of their dreams!  Wretched souls!  Exhausted by work, the climate, and the insects, they fall heartbroken to the soil made fertile by their labors, on the edge of the green forests they have cleared neither for themselves nor for their children, racked by the gentle and fatal sickness of nostalgia, dreaming perhaps of the homeland which had not even been able to feed them, calling in vain for the minister of their forefathers’ holy religion to soothe the terrors of the last agony with the immortal hopes of the faith.

Gentlemen, it is not a happy picture, but this is the true story of thou­sands and thousands of our fellow countrymen who have emigrated.  I have put it together from the reports of my Missionaries and from what has been told or written to me by those who have witnessed and shared these most distressing facts.

However, I do not want to be misunderstood or appear pessimistic.  The sad happenings I have mentioned are not true of all emigrants.  Very many of them have found in the countries hosting them an adequate living, many a comfortable one, and some even wealth.  They form communities of which the motherland can be proud.  But there are also very many who are miserable, and in great measure this is due to their ignorance and to our neglect.[8]

 

 

“An infinity of material and moral evils”

 

The dangers the emigrants must face are such and so many that not even a perspi­cacious person could avoid them completely.  What shall we say of the poor peasants who trust themselves to people who in every emigrant see an object to be exploited? 

Unfortunately, newspaper readers may recall a number of incidents, sometimes shameful, sometimes tragic, but always heartbreaking, which have victimized our poor brothers and sisters.

A few years ago, the newspapers reported that two or three hundred emigrants who had arrived at the port of embarkation ‑- I can’t remember whether Genoa or Naples ‑- found out that the money they had saved by much hard work and the sale of their remaining belongings had ended up in the hands of swind­lers.  You can imagine the tears, the outcries, the cursing and, finally, the return to their hometown at public expense.

In early 1873, a steamship loaded with many families from the Abruzzi Region arrived in New York.  The emigration agents had put them aboard the boat with the promise that they would sail for Buenos Aires where relatives and friends were anxiously waiting for them.  But those poor wretches, who had already suffered so much during the crossing, found themselves on other shores, exhausted, far away from their intended destination and without money to continue their journey.

However, these might be exceptions.  But the general rule is the manner in which our emigrants are transported.  Crammed worse than beasts, they are stowed on ships in much greater numbers than the regulations or the capacity of the vessels allow.  They make the long uncomfortable voyage literally huddled together, with what risks for their health and morality one can easily imagine.

What can we say about the even more distressing situation that awaits them on their arrival at their longed-for destination?  They are often taken in by clever tricks, dazzled by a thousand false promises, and forced by necessity to bind themselves to contracts that are a veritable form of slavery, their children left begging on the path to crime and the women cast into the abyss of dishonor.

The vast uncultivated lands in South America are leased out to the emigrants either directly by the Governments or by private organizations that have acquired the land for speculation.  After a certain number of years and upon payment of appropriate fees, the peasants become owners of the land they have drenched with their sweat.  The settlers pitch their tents in these regions and transform them into productive and prosperous farms.  These peasants often come from the same area, sometimes from the same village, and name after their home town the new settlement where Divine Providence has led them. 

But while these settlements can lessen the dangers of emigration and make life safer and less oppressive, they can also, if not well overseen, cause countless material and moral evils.  In fact, our poor peasants run the risk of being hoodwinked by exploiters into spending their whole life on sterile lands and in unwholesome places, exposed to wild animals and fierce tribes.  All these things have already happened, and more than once.  The press and public opinion have repeatedly raised a hue and cry over these conditions.[9]

 

 

“Very easy prey to exploiters”

 

Where is this great mass of people, this flood of Italian blood going? 

Most of them, sad to say, don’t know where they are going.  For them it’s America, the country where those who leave the motherland in search of fortune go.  South America or North America, in temperate or tropical zones, in healthy or pernicious climates, on fertile lands or on lands even more sterile than those they have abandoned, in populated centers or in deserted areas: they don’t know.  They go to America, often with the added burden of a signed blank contract that places, if not their person, surely their work at the service of a boss. 

In this way, emigration agents sent a rather large number of emigrants to Brazil to take the place of the already insufficient number of workers needed for agriculture, a number, as I mentioned before, that had become absolutely inadequate because of the abolition of slavery.  In this way, too, the padrone system, condemned by a bill of the United States Senate, massed together an immense number of emigrants in New York City ‑- attracted there by a thousand promises ‑- poor emigrants who were shamelessly exploited and then abandoned to make room for the new arrivals, the new victims of sordid gains. 

In Chile, finally, not to mention many other cases, several thousand countrymen of ours, lured there by ridiculous lies, now find neglect and destitution.  While here in the motherland ignorance and poverty make them easy victims of the emigration agents, down there isola­tion and destitution make them very easy prey to exploiters, who are always and everywhere without an ounce of compassion, there more so than elsewhere.  Thus, instead of appropriate and well paid work, of abundant and healthy nourishment, those unfortunates find a backbreaking job ‑- if and when they do ‑- and a remuneration that is a real mockery compared to the work, the danger, and the rising cost of the necessities of life.  Finally they discover that the little improvement in food supplies is often paid for at the high price of the privation of meaningful social life.[10]

 

 

“They lose the sense of their identity and faith”

 

However, who could describe the dangers our poor emigrants meet when it comes to their religious life.  Suffice it to say that the vast majority lives there without ever seeing the face of a priest or the cross on a bell tower.  So, abandoned to themselves, either they give in to the most disheartening indifference or they desert the faith of their forefathers and mothers.  Gentlemen, I will tell you something that cuts me to the quick when I think of it.  In sixty years, according to official calculations, 40 million Catholics emigrated to a great American Republic.  Now, even supposing that 20 million returned ‑- which actually has never happened ‑- Catholics living there should number at least 20 million, taking into account births and deaths.  But, according to the last ecclesiastical census, the number of Catholics does not reach, or certainly at that time it did not reach, 8 million.  Where did the other 12 million go? 

They lose the sense of their identity and with that ‑- the thought breaks my heart ‑- their attachment to the Catholic Faith.  They fall prey to Protestant propaganda, unfortunate victims of the sects, more active and numerous there than in other places.  Gentlemen, allow a Bishop to weep before you over such a misfortune!  The lack of the spiritual bread that is the word of God, the impossibility of reconciliation with him, the absence of the liturgy and of any encouragement to do good, exercise a deadly influence on the morale of the people.  An educated person also is subjected to such a danger, but to a lesser degree because his education, culture, and theoretical knowledge of religion somehow help to safeguard him from the frost of indifference.  If nothing else, he can unite himself spiritually with the divine mysteries celebrated elsewhere and nourish his mind with wholesome reading.  But how could a poor peasant rise to such sublime thoughts?  To him, more than to others, the idea of religion is inseparable from that of Church and priest.  Where every visual religious display is silent, little by little he forgets his duties toward God; and Christian life weakens and dies in his heart.  The thirst for truth, the desire of the infinite, however, do not die in him!  “Man,” says a modern unbelieving philosopher, “needs religion and is religious by nature, just as he is intelligent by nature.  Better yet, he is religious because he is endowed with reason.”  The more it becomes impossible to satisfy this need, the more it makes itself felt.  This is evident among our migrants, even where the most despicable materialism reigns supreme for lack of priests.  So imagine how much that need must be alive among those ‑- and they are the majority ‑- who still sense  the dignity of their own person and feel the claims of their own conscience.[11]

 

 

“They are abandoned down there without a shadow of religious care”

 

When they don’t die during the voyage or succumb to privation or to heartbreak for having been duped, these poor migrant peasants are left in those regions without a shadow of religious assistance.  Their state is more easily imagined than described.

There are not many priests in America.  The few who are available almost always do not know our language and could not be of any help, much as they might want to, for the simple reason that our emigrants would not understand them.  Besides, the emigrants are so spread out all over that vast territory that the priest could visit them only rarely and briefly.

Hence, Italians in America are almost constrained, as a rule, to live a life that is worse than pagan, without Mass, without sacraments, without public devotions, without liturgy, and without the word of God, so that it is already a lot if their children are baptized.  It is clear that such a state of affairs must imperceptibly lead those poor wretches to a frightening indifference toward religion and a dehumanizing materialism (...).

Moreover, we must not forget that, though there are not all that many Catholic churches and priests in America, there is plenty of Protestant and Masonic proselytizing, depending on places. 

Where the voice of God’s minister does not arrive, immoral novels, pamphlets, books and flyers from various sects do arrive.  Hence, whereas religious assistance is totally lacking, the dangers to the faith of our poor emigrants abound.  Either out of expediency or out of ignorance, the emigrants let themselves get caught in the nets of the apostles of error.[12]

 

 

“Most of the evils could be avoided”

 

What most saddens the heart is the thought that most of the religious, moral, and economic ills to which our emigration is exposed could be avoided or much reduced if the ruling classes of Italy were conscious of the duties that bind them to their expatriate brethren.  In fact, gentlemen, the immense American countries are not so unhealthy as not to be able to offer a tranquil corner to our emigration.  Not all lands are so controlled by speculation that some fertile lands could not be found at a good price, such as to assure a fair profit to the workers.  It is all a question of pointing this out to our emigrants.  But when was this ever done in Italy?  Was the emigrant ever told that he should be on his guard against the various contracts and lands offered him and against the traps concealed in them?  For example, are the lands unsafe, unhealthy, unproductive?  Though fertile, are they so far away from any possible means of communication, so isolated from all human contact as to cause the produce of the emigrant’s labor to remain unsold, leaving him rich and poor at the same time?

I repeat, when was this ever done in Italy?  At most, some people do a little shouting, while others weep under the blows of events that offend national pride in the person of those brothers and sisters of ours.  There are cries and expressions of compassion, even demands for some government measures.  Then what?  All is hushed up, all is forgotten, all calms down in the deceiving quiet of the wave that hides its victim and waits for new ones.[13]

 

 

d) GOD’S PLAN

 

 

“Emigration is a good and an evil”

 

It is undoubtedly a good thing for both those who go and those who remain, a true safety valve, relieving the country of excess population, opening new avenues for commerce and industry, blending and perfecting civilization, broadening the concept of motherland beyond physical boundaries, making the whole world man’s motherland.  But it is always a very grievous individual and national evil when it is allowed to take place without laws, limits, guidance, or effective protection.  Emigration, in this case, would not mean lively and intelligent forces working for the good of the individual and of society but forces in conflict, often destroying one another in turn.  It would mean exploitation of the emigrants, to their detriment and shame and that of the land of their birth.  It would not mean life-giving waters but torrents without banks, which lose the riches of their waters among boulders and thistles, let alone destroy the cultivated farmland.[14]

 

       

“Emigration is an instrument of divine Providence even in the midst of catastrophes”

 

Emigration is a law of nature.  The physical and the human world depend on this mysterious force which stirs and mixes the elements of life without destroying them, carrying living organisms born in one place and scattering them throughout space, transforming and bringing them to perfection, thus renewing the miracle of creation at every moment. 

Seeds migrate on the wings of the wind.  Plants migrate from continent to continent on the waves of the seas and rivers.  Birds and other animals move from place to place.  But even more do human beings migrate, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone, and, in so doing, are always the free instruments of Divine Providence, which presides over human destiny, leading all people, even through great calami­ties, to their final goal: the perfection of man on earth and the glory of God in heaven. 

This is what Divine Revelation is telling us.  This is what history and modern science are teaching us.  It is only from this threefold source of truth that we can deduce the laws that govern the phenomenon of emigration and that we can set down the wise and practical guidelines regulating this phenomenon in all its rich variety of forms.[15]

 

 

“The religious and social greatness of the emigrants’ cause”

 

I think that the religious and moral importance of the cause of our Italian emi­grants and the political and material greatness of this hospitable country ‑- which, as the illustrious President of the Republic pointed out to me a few days ago, opens wide its doors to them ‑- are two great components destined to be fused into one and to unveil to the 20th century the secrets of a new era that will lack neither the blessings of God nor the conquests of civilization (...).

I have traveled a considerable part of your glorious country and once again admired, with deep and enthusiastic joy, God’s great designs for America.  When the 4th centennial of Christopher Columbus was being cele­brated, I was invited to give some conferences on this subject back in Italy, for the simple reason that the family of Christopher Columbus had once be­longed to my beloved diocese of Piacenza, though he himself was born in Genoa.

One of these conferences was entitled: “God’s Plan for America.”  I saw those thoughts confirmed during my happy stay with you on my long trip through the various States of the Union.[16]

 

 

“The union in God through Jesus Christ of all people of good will is taking place”

 

Some day, if neither laziness nor ignorance of the ways of God nor complacency over past victories nor repression of rightful aspirations deviates the people from the divine plan, all nations will have in this land numerous rich, happy, moral, and God-fearing descendants who, while retaining the characteristics of their respective nationalities, will be closely united.  This land of blessings will give rise to inspirations, develop principles, unfurl new mysterious forces that will regenerate and revitalize the Old World, teaching it the true economy of liberty, brotherhood, and equality, showing it that, though politically and religious united, people of different origins can very well keep their own language and nationality, without the barriers that divide people and make them envious, without armed forces to dominate and destroy one another (...).

This is my hope, gentlemen.  Yes, this is my hope!  For while the world is dazzled by its progress, while man exults in his conquests over matter and lords it over nature, disemboweling the earth, yoking the lightening, cutting isthmuses to mingle the waters of the oceans, eliminating distances; while nations fall and rise and renew themselves; while races mingle, spread, and fuse; above the roar of our machines, above all this feverish activity, over and beyond all these gigantic achievements and not without them, a much vaster, nobler, and more sublime work is developing: the union in God through Jesus Christ of all people of good will.[17]

 

 

“The Catholic Church, victorious and peacemaking”

 

God’s servants who, without realizing it, work for the fulfillment of his plans are numerous in all periods.  But in the great epochs of social renewal there are many more than we can see or imagine.  They are innumerable.  Gentlemen, remember this and never forget it: the supreme purpose divine Providence assigned humanity is not the conquest of matter by means of science, at a more or less advanced stage, nor the formation of those great peoples in which are embodied, from time to time, the attributes of power, wisdom, and riches.  No, his purpose is the union of all peoples in God through Jesus Christ and his visible representative, the Roman  Pontiff.  The obstacles still in the way of this magnificent goal will dis­appear little by little.  And the day will come, and it will come above all in this great and glorious country of yours, when all nations will understand where true greatness is to be found and will feel the need to return to the Father.  And indeed they will return.

Gentlemen, what a glorious day that will be!  A sublime day, in which all accents, all voices speaking different languages will raise to God the hymn of praise and thanksgiving.  The sun of truth will shine more brightly and the rainbow of peace will envelope the earth in all its colors.  It will be like an arch of triumph under which the Church will march victorious and peacemaking, drawing the modern world to herself.  And so society, renewed in Christ, will continue in order and justice on the path of freedom, true civilization, and progress.

Gentlemen, let us hasten that blessed day with our desires, our prayers, and our works![18]

 

 

“Ancient piety is awakening”

 

I am deeply moved by what I have seen on my long pilgrimage.  I have seen the Catholic faith fully alive in the midst of innumerable difficulties in the fazendas of the State of Sao Paulo.  I have seen the faith of these settle­ments in Paranà, and I hope and pray that people in the cities of Latin America will imitate those of North America.  Up there Italian churches are being built in all the cities.  Our Missionaries assist them together with other religious.  Ancient piety is awakening.  Good reputation and respect is daily increasing with the authorities, thus verifying once more that wherever an apostle raises the cross, civilization springs up spontaneously and material well-being increases.[19]

 

 

2. THE CHURCH AND EMIGRATION

 

 

“Where people are working and suffering, there is the Church,” which has the mission “to evangelize the children of poverty and labor.”  The Church does not direct its missionary activity only to unbelievers but also to the Catholics who are exposed to the danger of becoming unbelievers because of emigration.

It is necessary to intervene concretely and immediately because “the reli­gious and moral future of emigrating people depends on that modicum of religion and morality,” that must be preserved at once as the most precious part of their cultural and religious patri­mony.  What we need is “heroes who will go forth to evangelize” in conditions less dangerous but no less arduous than those of the missionaries to the unbeliev­ers.

The preservation of, and appreciation for, the emigrants’ spiritual heritage call for the preservation of ethnic culture: “religion and country complement each other in this work of love and redemption.”

The pastoral care of migrants must take this principle into account.  Both the missionaries and the receiving Churches must respect the cultural identity and religious traditions peculiar to the emigrants.  So, under the leadership of the bishop, the missionary should be free to exercise his ministry, a ministry that will prudently guide the immigrants’ integration into the local Church, will respect normal rhythms, and not prematurely force an assimilation that would destroy the immigrants’ thousand-year-old heritage of religion and tradition.

Emigration is not a concern just for the sending or the receiving Churches.  In fact, as a universal phenomenon and problem, it is a concern for the universal Church.  Hence the need for coordination among the local Churches, a coordination that can only come from the center.  The problem of emigration is like that of the Church’s missionary activity “to the infidels.”  Just as the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith exists for this missionary activity, so also is there a need to set up an appropriate Congrega­tion or at least a central commission in the Roman Curia for the emigrant Catholics of all countries.

 

 

a) THE PRESENCE OF THE CHURCH

 

 

“Where people are  working and suffering, there is the Church”

 

The Church of Jesus Christ, which has sent her Gospel workers among the most barbarous peoples and most inhospitable regions, has not forgotten and will never neglect the mission God entrusted to her, namely, to preach the Gospel to the children of poverty and labor.  She will always look with anxious heart on so many poor souls who, in forcible isolation, are losing the faith of their forebears and, with the faith, every sentiment of Christian and civil upbringing.  Yes, gentlemen, where people are working and suffering, there is the Church because the Church is the mother, friend, and defender of the people and will always have a word of comfort, a smile, a blessing for them.[20]

 

 

“A new and consoling development is taking place in the Church on their behalf” 

 

As everyone can see, the Church is bringing about a new, marvelous, and consoling reawakening on behalf of the poor and abandoned.  Blessed many times over is the person who will be able to help the Church in this religious and social rebirth.  This is the time when ‑- in the words of the Apostle ‑- if one member rejoices, all the members rejoice; if one member suffers, all the other members come together to help it. 

If the past has been bleak, if, until yester­day, our brothers and sisters were left to themselves in the vast plains of America, in the Andes or the Cordilleras or the Rockies, on the banks of great lakes in the North, along the Plata, Orenoque, Amazon, or Mississippi Rivers, along the shores of the seas and in the forests, Christian charity and today’s social standards now require that we put a stop to a deplorable state of affairs unworthy of a great and generous people. 

The challenge I lay down before the minds and hearts of the clergy and laity of Italy is great, noble, untried, glorious.  It makes room for the widow’s mite as well as for the rich man’s offering, for the unassuming work of calmer people as well as for the generous drive of more ardent spirits.[21]

 

 

“Unfortunate, truly unfortunate”

 

Inside me there still resounds the plaintive voice of a poor Lombard peasant who came to Piacenza two years ago from the remote Tibagy Valley in Brazil to ask me for a Missionary in the name of that large settlement.  “Father,” he told me with a broken voice, “if you only knew how much we have suffered!  How much we have wept at the bedside of our dear dying ones who were anxiously begging us for a priest ... and we were unable to get one!  Oh God, we can no longer live, we can no longer live like that!”  With unpolished yet eloquent language, the poor man went on to tell me about really heart-rending scenes.  I must confess that, never like at that moment, did I wish I still had the vigor of my youth.  Never like then did I regret the impossibil­ity of changing the golden cross of the Bishop with the wooden cross of the Missionary so that I could hasten to help those unfortunate ones, truly unfortunate because, besides all the other dangers, they also risked the danger of falling into the abyss of despair.[22]

 

 

“We are here like animals”