News Archive

At a time like the present, where migrations redefine the traditional arrangements on which living in society is based, fostering encounters between "us" and those who are "others" is an indispensable prerequisite for building a society that wants to define itself as inclusive, supportive and open to encountering others. What is young people's perception of the migration phenomenon? The young people we intercept through our proposals are, normally, people who are curious and open to the encounter with diversity, and have a desire to get involved. Sometimes, interacting with contexts and people from very different cultural and religious backgrounds, we [...]

Last April 24, the Webinar People not numbers... (Un)Welcoming migrants in Europe was held online. This was the first of an ecumenical and international webinar series aim at fostering critical perspectives on migration in Europe. The series facilitates an ongoing conversation on these issues among theologians and migration scholars, refugees and migrants, activists, and church and civic leaders. This initiative provides a platform for dialogues and exchange of experiences of good practices and lessons learned among Christian communities. After opening greetings from Fr. Aldo Skoda, director of SIMI and professor of Pastoral Theology and Human Mobility at the Pontifical Urbanina University, [...]

3rd Meeting Migrantes Lombardia – SIMI Building the Future with… Chaplains and Communities On March 20th in Bergamo, the third day of permanent training took place, organized by the Offices for the Pastoral Care of Migrants of the Lombardy Dioceses (Migrantes Lombardia - Italy) in collaboration with SIMI. The objective of the meeting, titled Building the Future with... Chaplains and Communities, was to focus on the dynamics, protagonists, contexts, and methodologies of pastoral action in the field of migration. The relevance of the dimension of co-responsibility, collaboration, and correlation, expressed through the preposition “with,” becomes a manifestation of what the [...]

These guidelines were commissioned by the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for the Promotion ofIntegral Human Development and drafted by Professor Fr. Aldo Skoda C.S. and Professor Gioacchino Campese C.S. of the Scalabrini International Migration Institute (SIMI). They do not constitute a new magisterial document but faithfully draw from what has already been wisely codified by the universal Magisterium. The document came about as a response to an explicit request from many bishops’ conferences and dioceses interested in developing a pastoral care for migrants that is up to contemporary challenges. It is particularly nour- ished by the “Pastoral [...]

Did your passion for medicine come before your call to help migrants? Was it this passion that led you to meet the Scalabrini secular missionaries? When I had to choose what to study at university, at some point it became clear to me that if I hadn't at least tried to pursue a career in medicine, I would never have forgiven myself. I wanted to devote my life to serving others and dreamed of becoming a Doctors Without Borders physician. During high school, I had distanced myself from the Church and never thought about a consecrated life. I rediscovered my [...]

Migration in Theological Thought and Pastoral Action FOCUS Urbaniana University Journal 3/2022 In a historical excursus about mission, Swiss theologian Walbert Bühlmann speaks of a Third Church as a new stage in which the Christian community finds itself and a "new migration of the people of God". He recalls how in the first millennium the community and theological-pastoral reflection were largely influenced by the eastern churches (first church) and subsequently in the second millennium the gravitational center shifted to the west (second church). The third millennium is characterized by polycentrism and particularly with the flourishing of cultures and populations that [...]

We present the second part of Luca Agostini’s research on climate change and migration: A Reflection of COP26 and the Future of Climate Induced Migration 2022 Climate Justice and Migration: Treatment and Dignity   Climate change and its effects have the potential to provide for a uniting cause, bridging communal, economic, or social divides in pursuit of a better planet, or a further measure with which preexisting economic and social divides are exacerbated whereby states who have contributed the most towards climate change and gained the most economically from their exploitation of recourses manage to use their financial power in order to [...]