BETLEMME, SOCIETÀ PER LE MISSIONI ESTERE di. — 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 entitled “Bethlehem Missionary League,” whose members included about twenty of the most prominent figures in Catholic Switzerland, thus placing the new undertaking on a national basis; the war of 1914–18 also contributed to this, as it drove the French, German, and later also Italian students away from the society. Subsequently (1920), recognition of the secondary school of Immensee was obtained, while Bondolfi, intent on creating a genuine missionary society, took steps to secure the assignment of a mission territory of its own. The “Missionary Society of B.” officially came into being by decree of 31 May 1921 of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide; in 1924 the first three missionaries from Immensee departed for China, where, in 1929, they were assigned a field of activity in the province of Heilungkiang. In 1922 the Society opened a new house at Wolhusen, with a theological seminary, and in the same year another at Rebstein (S. Gallo), with a preparatory school; ten years later, a third was opened 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 at Schöneck. In 1929 the region of Heilungkiang was established 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 students of philosophy and theology, and 17 pre-brothers coadjutors: of this personnel, 42 priests were working in the missions in Manchuria (Tsitsihan) and 12 in Rhodesia (along with four brothers); a further 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 the missionary undertaking; it has a large printing press and its own periodical (Bethlehem), which appears in German, French, and Italian editions.
Giovanni B. Tragella