United States

The presence of the Scalabrinian Missionary Sisters (MSCS) in the United States began in 1941 with the arrival of the first 4 Sisters from Brazil. After only 4 years, with the opening of the Noviciate, the community began to grow and spread rapidly, and now has communities in Chicago, Melrose Park, Northlake, Maryland, and New York. The communities are composed of MSCS Sisters of various nationalities, who carry out their mission in various areas of pastoral work: Christian education, catechesis, sanitary pastoral care, formation of laborers, pastoral care of migrants, parish work and study centers. The pastoral care for migrants, in particular, is in a state of constant transformation due to the endlessly changing reality of the phenomenon of migration. The Church, therefore, continuously tries to respond to the problems associated with this phenomenon.

At the start of the third millennium, the globalization of the migration phenomenon, increasingly provokes suffering and challenges for all those who must come to terms with this reality. Faced with this reality, and guided by the experience of God's love and with Jesus Christ at the center of their lives and mission, the MSCS Sisters make themselves present with creativity, efficiency and hope, in their ministry of service. They live their vocation within the Church by radically following Jesus Christ, in their particular expression of femininity and of the Scalabrinian charism. The evangelical and missionary service, of each MSCS, among migrants, contributes to the growth of unity, openness towards each individual person and reality, care for the needy, acceptance and respect of all diversity, and the appreciation of cultures, within the Church and the world.

The United States is still one of the countries which receives the most immigrants and refugees, even as the laws become progressively more strict, and in some cases, reach the point where human rights are denied and the migrants' lives are actually put at risk. There is a significant deportation of migrants, especially back to Latin American countries. The statistics of 1997 show that in the USA there are 25.8 million immigrants, 9 million of which are naturalized American citizens. Besides the large number of naturalized citizens, the demand still exceeds the numbers granted, thereby creating a significant number of illegal immigrants in the country, roughly 5 million of them, to whom one might also add those who hold only a temporary residence permit. The countries with the highest number of immigrant communities present in the USA are: Mexico with 27.2%, the Philippines with 4.4%, China and Hong Kong with 4.1%, Cuba with 3.5%, Vietnam with 3% and India with 2.9%.
 

Canada

The Scalabrinian Missionari Sisters - MSCS- are an international religious community animated by the Scalabrinian charism; spirituality and mission at the service of migrants and refugees. At the moment, two Sisters are living in a religious community in Mississauga, Ontrario. Our ministry is multifaceted with primary emphasis on the pastoral and social needs of the migrants and refugees. Sister Bertilla, MSCS, originally from Italy, works as an associate pastor, at St. John Bosco Parish in Toronto. She is dedicated to the Italian migrants, and accompanies them in their process of integration in the receiving society and helps them nurture their faith and religious tradition. Sister Diane, MSCS, originally from Brazil, is a full time teacher at St. Catherine of Siena School, where children of many nationalities and cultures attend. Besides the school work, Sister Diane MSCS coordinates the religious education programme which aims at the sacramental preparation of children and adults in the parish.

The city of Toronto has one twelfth of Canada's population but one quarter of the country's immigrants. Immigrants account for more than 92% of the city's population growth. Toronto's citizens come from 169 countries and speak more than 100 languages. The top three foreign languages are Chinese, Italian and Portuguese.

Toronto's cultural and religious diversity is unmatched. Mass is now celebrated in 35 different languages; 200,000 Muslims observe Ramadam and the city is home to half of the country's Jews. There are more visible minorities in Toronto than there are residents in any of the Atlantic Provinces, Saskatchewan or Manitoba.
 

Mexico

The Scalabrinian Missionary Sisters - MSCS - present in Mexico are Brazilian, Filipino, Canadian and Mexican. They live their consecrated and missionary life, placing their femininity and their commitment at the service of the Church, of society and of history in which they are inserted. They live in five small communities, in Guadalajara, Tijuana, Ensenada, Tonalá and Mexico City. Living with the MSCS Sisters, young Mexican women partake in the formation course in preparation to religious life in a Scalabrinian missionary family.

The work carried out by the MSCS Sisters among the migrants on Mexican land is of a various nature, thanks to the richness of the missionary spirit which leads them and to the pluralism which characterising the same migration phenomena. Other than vocational promotion and formation of young women in preparation to being migrants with migrants, by vocation, the MSCS Sisters are concerned in answering the two biggest pastoral requisites which constitute the main challenge that human mobility in Mexico poses to the Church and to society.

On the one hand, the MSCS Sisters are dedicated to the unconditional hospitality, to the defence of life and its rights, to the promotion of hope, and also often to the immediate needs of the migrants who are on the move. This takes place above all in Tijuana and in Ensenada where they coordinate shelters for migrants. On the other hand, the MSCS Missionaries work in the organisation and coordination of the human mobility pastoral care on a national, diocesan and local level. In Mexico City they coordinate the pastoral care and the action of the Archdiocesan Caritas for the migrants. Besides, the MSCS Sisters are dedicated to the promotion of solidarity and fraternity towards migrants, to formation of volunteers and agents, and to the sensitisation of the ecclesial opinion, in order to awaken responses to the appeal that the migrations constantly make to the Church.

In fact, migration in Mexico forms a complex and significant situation of the local reality. Regardless to the many obstacles and repressive laws, above all the closure of the national borders and the strict controls of the Police along the border with the USA, migration doesn't cease. With John Paul II, the MSCS Sisters know that "the human person has the right to go out of his own land… and also to return", if this is necessary to obtain better living conditions. Mexico, other than being a land of movement for its citizens, it is also a land of continuous and ceaseless "pilgrimage" for many people who from many Central and Southern American countries try to cross the border towards the North. Among these people in movement, a particular category is formed by those who are repatriated by force. For them, often the last of society and people with neither voice and nor power, the MSCS Sisters become sisters, mothers, and partners along the way.