Bethlehem, Society for Foreign Missions of

BETHLEHEM, SOCIETY FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS OF. - It is the Swiss institute for the foreign missions with its seat at Immensee. It was founded, on the remnants of a declining "apostolic school," by Peter Bondolfi (v.), who worked there from 1907 to 1943. Having suppressed the houses that the apostolic school had opened abroad, Bondolfi first created a civil society under the title "Bethlehem Missionary League," of which about twenty of the most prominent persons of Catholic Switzerland were members, thus placing the new work on a national basis; the war of 1914-18 also contributed to this, since it removed from the society the French, German and then also Italian students. Subsequently (1920) parity was obtained for the middle school of Immensee, while Bondolfi, aiming to create a true missionary society, was taking steps to obtain also the assignment of a mission field of its own. The "Missionary Society of B." received official life with the decree of 31 May 1921 of the S. Congregation of Propaganda Fide; in 1924 the first three missionaries of Immensee set out for China, where, in 1929, a field of action was assigned to them in the province of Heilungkiang. In 1922 the Society opened a new house at Wolhusen, with a theological seminary, in 1922 another at Rebstein (St. Gall) with a preparatory school, and ten years later a third at Torry near Fribourg for vocations from French-speaking Switzerland: finally in 1931 the students of philosophy and theology moved into the new large house of Schöneck. In 1929 the region of Heilungkiang was erected into an independent mission, and in 1932 into an apostolic prefecture. In 1938 the Society sent its first missionaries to Southern Rhodesia.

At the beginning of 1942 the Society of B. counted 197 members, that is 116 priests, 64 students of philosophy and theology and 17 pre-brother coadjutors: of this personnel, 42 priests work in the missions in Manchuria (Tsitsihan) and 12 in Rhodesia (with four brothers); another 11 priests were waiting to leave for the missions.

The Society is not a true religious congregation, but a society "sine votis," whose members bind themselves by oath to the institute and to the work of the missions; it has a large printing press and its own review (Bethlehem), which comes out in German, French and Italian editions.

Giovanni B. Tragella