To mark the 25th anniversary<\/strong> of the institute’s founding, we are sharing the reflections of Fr. Graziano Battistella<\/strong>, one of the directors of SIMI.<\/p>\n The idea for the Scalabrini International Migration Institute (SIMI)<\/strong> took shape in the late 1990s<\/strong>. For several decades, the Congregation had been developing a network of study centers that, in various geographical contexts, offered in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of migration through research, conferences, and debates. The centers were equipped with a documentation section that served as a reference point for researchers and published journals that disseminated articles by scholars engaged in this field. However, there was a lack of educational programs<\/strong>\u2014that is, the transmission of knowledge on migration through academic study, grounded in the Scalabrinian tradition<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Scalabrini\u2019s beatification in 1997<\/strong> provided an opportunity for the three Institutes of the Scalabrinian family, the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, and the Foundazioine Migrantes<\/strong> to come together<\/strong> around this initiative. The idea, however, did not materialize and was revived, at the suggestion<\/strong> of the late Superior General, Fr. Luigi Favero<\/strong>, during the 11th General Chapter, which decreed its establishment.<\/p>\n To ensure academic accreditation, a partnership with a university<\/strong> was necessary. An agreement was reached with the Pontifical Urbaniana University<\/strong> (PUU), based in part on a letter from the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, which in 1986 urged ordinaries and seminary rectors to ensure \u201cspecialized academic training<\/strong>\u2026 especially for priests responsible for promoting and coordinating pastoral care for mobility at the national or regional level.\u201d<\/p>\n SIMI\u2019s objective<\/strong> was to provide academic training through the study of the pastoral theology of migration and the study of migration from the perspective of the human sciences<\/strong>. To achieve this objective, an affiliation was established with both the Faculty of Theology and the Faculty of Philosophy of the PUU, and in September 2000<\/strong>, SIMI was able to launch its own teaching programs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In 2004<\/strong>, SIMI became an institute incorporated into the Pontifical Urbaniana University<\/strong> and began awarding licentiate and doctoral degrees in the pastoral theology of human mobility. It began publishing an annual journal, Quaderni SIMI<\/strong><\/em>, which compiles contributions from an annual conference on various topics related to migration. However, its affiliation with the Faculty of Philosophy of the same university was terminated, as it involved the study of philosophy, which was not well-suited to the study of migration from a social sciences perspective.<\/p>\n This study was, however, resumed through the establishment in 2005<\/strong> of a first-level master\u2019s program<\/strong> on \u201cMigration: Policies and Resources for Social Cohesion,\u201d implemented through an agreement with the Libera Universit\u00e0 Maria Ss. Assunta<\/strong> (LUMSA). The master\u2019s program ceased operations in 2009 for external reasons.<\/p>\n Between 2002 and 2009, an average of 15 students per year attended the pastoral theology program, spread over the two-year period. These were primarily priests and religious from Africa and Asia<\/strong>, who resided at the facility at Via Calandrelli 11 and were supported by scholarships provided by the Scalabrini Foundation<\/strong>, established for this purpose in 2000. All students earned a licentiate in pastoral theology, and some also completed a doctorate. Scalabrinian students in the two-year licentiate program at the theological seminary in Rome and some Scalabrinian missionaries were also able to take advantage of SIMI\u2019s academic program. At the same time, from 2005 to 2009, 15 lay students attended the one-year master\u2019s program each year.<\/p>\n From 2002 to 2009, SIMI offered high-quality instruction on migration and pastoral theology of migration, training laypeople<\/strong> who went on to join administrative structures and civil society programs, as well as pastoral workers<\/strong> who were able to apply their knowledge within the scope of their mission. The trust placed in the institute by the Church attests to the merit of the initiative<\/strong>. However, the problematic aspects should not be overlooked, particularly the limited interest in this study of migration within the Church, the limited deployment of pastoral workers in the field of migration once they returned to their home countries, and the difficulty of supporting the pastoral theology program through scholarships.<\/p>\n Even within the Scalabrinian community, not everyone agreed that the preparation of missionaries necessarily required specific academic training. Those who attended SIMI, however, retain positive memories of what they learned and how it has helped them in their ministry.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archivio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6287"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6355,"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6287\/revisions\/6355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simieducation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}