BETLEHEM, SOCIETY FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS OF. — This is the Swiss institute for foreign missions based in Immensee. It was founded, on the remnants of a declining apostolic school, Bondolfi (v.), who worked there from 1907 to 1943. After suppressing the houses that the apostolic school had opened abroad, Bondolfi first created a civil society under the title "Missionary League of Bethlehem," whose members included about twenty of the most prominent figures of Swiss Catholicism, thus placing the new work on a national basis; this collaboration was also affected by the war of 1914-18, which removed French, German, and later Italian students from the society. Subsequently (1920), the balance of the Immensee middle school was achieved, while Bondolfi, aiming to create a true missionary society, took steps to obtain the assignment of its own mission field. The "Missionary Society of B." officially came into existence with the decree of May 31, 1921, from the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide; in 1924, the first three missionaries from Immensee departed for China, where, in 1929, a field of action was assigned to them in the province of Heilungkliang. In 1922 the Society opened a new house in Wolhusen, with a theological seminary; in 1922 another in Rebstein (St. Gallen) with a preparatory school; and ten years later a third in Torrey near Fribourg for vocations from French-speaking Switzerland. Finally, in 1931, the philosophy and theology students moved into the new large house in Schönenck. In 1929 the Heilungkliang region was erected as an independent mission, and in 1932 as an apostolic prefecture. In 1938 the Society sent its first missionaries to Southern Rhodesia.
At the beginning of 1942, the Society of B. had 197 members: namely, 116 priests, 64 philosophy and theology students, and 17 pre-brother coadjutors. Of this personnel, 42 priests worked in the missions in Manchuria (Tsitsihar) and 12 in Rhodesia (with four brothers); another 11 priests were awaiting departure for the missions.
The Society is not a true religious congregation but a "sine votis" society, whose members bind themselves by oath to the institute and to missionary work. It has a large printing press and its own journal (Bethlehem), which is published in German, French, and Italian editions.
Giovanni B. Tragella