Oblates and Oblate Sisters, Congregations of

OBLATES AND OBLATE SISTERS, Congregations of. - Religious institutes of men and women, with or without religious vows. Still in existence there are:

I. OBLATES OF STS. AMBROSE AND CHARLES

Founded by St. Charles Borromeo, who had the first idea of secular priests, who were to live under the obedience of the bishop and at his full disposal for the service of the diocese, around 1570, perhaps suggested to him by the Oratory of St. Philip in Rome, and in March 1578 he put it into effect with a "college of priests and ecclesiastical persons under the title of Oblates of St. Ambrose" (in 1611 "and of St. Charles" was added).

Gregory XIII, by the bull of 26 April of the same year, approved its Constitution; in the following August the formal erection took place at the church of St. Sepolcro (which remained the mother-house until 1928) and the detailed study of the Rules was begun which, tested from 29 February 1579, elaborated by Cardinal A. Valerio, appeared in their definitive form around October 1581 (Acta Eccl. Mediolan., III, Milan 1892, cols. 49-90). In them the vow of obedience and permanence was commanded; the vow of poverty in fact resolved itself (and is the present-day rule) into a cession, in favor of the Congregation, of every material revenue attached to the office and employment and of the alms of Masses, freely accepting a modest annual allowance sufficient for clothing and for any personal needs.

St. Charles wanted the common life as a foundation, but already from the end of 1579 he did not oblige residence at the mother-house. The Oblates subsequently began to regroup according to the activity chosen as a preferential title, save obedience to the archbishop. The Oblates worked, and worked also outside the Milanese diocese. Suppressed by Napoleon, they were restored by the archbishop Monsignor Romilli in 1854.

Enrico Cattaneo

II. OBLATES AND OBLATE SISTERS MISSIONARI DI RHO

The College of the Oblate Missionaries of Rho (Milan), a specialized branch of the Oblates of Sts. Ambrose and Charles, has as its founder the oblate Giorgio Maria Martinelli (v.) and was canonically erected by Cardinal Benedetto Erba Odescalchi on April 4, 1721, at the sanctuary of the Beata Vergine Addolorata de' Miracoli of Rho.

The purpose of the Oblate Missionaries is to preach missions and spiritual exercises to the clergy and to religious women without receiving any emolument except travel expenses. To the vow of obedience to the archbishop pro tempore, they add that of perpetual permanence in the College, which they renew every year on July 22. The rules are those of the Oblates of Sts. Ambrose and Charles, adapted to their particular manner of life according to the Norma kept by Fr. Martinelli and the first Fathers of the College of Rho in observing the Rules of the Congregation of the Oblates drafted in 1735 by the oblate G. B. Raineri and published for the use of the College in Milan in 1893. The College, governed by a provost and a vicar who remain in office two years, is independent from the General Congregation in the administration of its goods; it depends, however, morally and disciplinarily on the provost general of the Oblates.

The College was suppressed by the Cisalpine Republic on Oct. 13, 1798, reopened on July 26, 1799, again suppressed on Apr. 25, 1810 by Napoleon and reestablished on Oct. 24, 1814; it was sold to private individuals following the eversive laws of 1866; redeemed and registered to private individuals, it was completely rebuilt in 1912. Despite all these suppressions the Oblate Missionaries of Rho never desisted from their work, always conforming to the spirit of their founder.

III. OBLATES MISSIONARIES OF SS. GAUDENTIUS AND CHARLES OF NOVARA

Congregation founded in Novara in 1616 by the priest Francesco Marconi Quagliotti (d. 26 June 1617), after the death of Bishop Bascapé (v.), and inspired by that of the Oblates of St. Charles. It was canonically erected between the end of July and the first days of Aug. 1617. Its purpose is the education of the clergy (seminaries and spiritual exercises) and preaching to the people.

IV. OBLATES OF ST. CHARLES OF WESTMINSTER

A congregation inspired by that of the O. of St. Charles, founded in Nov. 1856, in the London district called Bayswater, by the priest Manning (v.), with the consent of Card. Wiseman, Archbishop of Westminster, for the preaching of popular missions in the poorest districts of the English capital. The Constitutions were definitively approved by Pius IX on 26 June 1877 (cf. Constitutiones Congregationis Anglicae Oblatorum S. Caroli, London 1877).

A. Pietro Frutaz

V. OBLATES OF MARY IMMACULATE

Religious congregation founded in 1816 at Aix in Provence by Eugene De Mazenod, later bishop of Marseilles, and approved in 1826 by Leo XII.

De Mazenod, who, as a nobleman, had to leave France as a child and come to Italy with his family (1791-1802), on returning to his homeland was painfully struck by the ruins that the Revolution had accumulated on the religious terrain, and he resolved to devote himself to the rural populations that lay in absolute abandonment. Ordained a priest, he associated with himself certain other zealous priests, laid the foundations of the new Institute and gave himself to the systematic evangelization of country parishes through the preaching of missions, taking St. Alphonsus as his model. He willed that preaching to the people should be made of persuasion and wholly pervaded by the desire to bring God back into souls profaned by impiety.

Having secured the preaching of missions to the people, De Mazenod agreed to send missionaries overseas. In 1841 he sent the first six missionaries to North America, a modest beginning of a gigantic undertaking, if one considers that, at a distance of a century, there are in Canada and in the northern territories 1930 O. of M. I. organized into five great provinces and eight apostolic vicariates, of which two, Mackenzie and Hudson Bay, extend beyond the shores of the Arctic Ocean and reach in two sectors the extreme limit of human habitation toward the Pole. In this slow and painful march from the southern provinces of Canada to the farthest confines of the earth, the O. of M. I. wrote glorious pages in the apostolate of the polar lands: two of them were massacred by Eskimo shamans, others disappeared at the bottom of frozen lakes or were suffocated by the blizzard in the immense desert of snow. In 1847 De Mazenod sent the first group of missionaries to the island of Ceylon, where 260 o. of M. I. currently work with 4 of their bishops, of whom 3 are native, in the dioceses of Colombo, Jaffna and Chilaw. In 1851 he sent them to South Africa, where now ca. 500 o. of M. I., divided into five apostolic vicariates, carry out their apostolate among the Bantu populations. Subsequently the Institute has accepted missions in Australia, Indochina, the Philippines, the Belgian Congo, Cameroon, Japan, Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay).

Another purpose of the Congregation is the direction of seminaries, education and teaching in colleges. Even in this field De Mazenod was an innovator: he adopted and had his followers adopt the moral theology of St. Alphonsus against the semi-Jansenistic rigorism then dominant in the theological schools of France, drawing upon himself criticisms, hostility and the charge of "ultramontanism" for his attachment to Rome. In 1848 the O. of M. I. began the University of Ottawa (Canada [v.]). On the island of Ceylon they direct the great colleges of higher studies of Colombo and Jaffna and hold in their hands a good part of the periodical press in the two native languages (Tamil and Sinhalese). In Basutoland (South Africa) there is rising, under their direction, a great university college, a kind of Catholic university for South Africa.

The O. of M. I. currently number more than 6000, of whom 30 are archbishops and bishops, distributed among 976 houses and missionary stations and grouped into 21 provinces, 15 apostolic vicariates and 2 prefectures.

Gaetano Drago

VI. OBLATES OF THE VIRGIN MARY

A religious congregation founded at Carignano (Turin) in 1814 through the work of the priests Giovanni Battista Reynaudi and P. B. Lanteri (v.), canonically erected on 13 November 1816, dissolved in 1829, and reconstituted by Lanteri in 1825 at Pinerolo. The Congregation and the Rules were approved by Leo XII with the brief Etsi Dei Filius of 1 September 1826. On the death of Lanteri, as compensation for the persecutions suffered, the Oblates of Mary Virgin were called to take possession of the sanctuary of the Consolata in Turin (10 January 1834).

From there and from the other houses of Carignano, Pinerolo and Livorno Vercellese they spread out over an intense thirty-year period of missions through the regions of Piedmont and neighboring areas. At the same time (1837) they began two vast foreign missions in Ava and Peru (India). The first apostolic vicar was Msgr. G. D. Ceretti, bishop of Antinopolis: having later returned to Turin because of broken health, he substituted in episcopal functions for the archbishop Msgr. Franzoni, who had been exiled (1847-56). He also revealed himself as a brilliant polemicist in the two (anonymous) volumes La libertà della Chiesa and Vera e falsa libertà. Other Oblates of Mary Virgin directed, alongside Fr. Margotti, the combative Armonia. Msgr. G. Balma succeeded Msgr. Ceretti in India, and he too soon returned to Turin because of illness and served as substitute for the same Msgr. Franzoni (1856-69), then archbishop of Cagliari (1871-81). From as early as 1835 the Oblates of Mary Virgin had established at Nice Marittima a flourishing ecclesiastical boarding school, which they directed until around 1890.

The period 1863-1900 was a succession of continual persecutions and ruin. Stripped of its possessions and suppressed three times in Italy and twice in France, the Congregation saw its attempts at reconstruction continually frustrated: Milan and Como (1856-59), Rocca Priora di Roma (1863-70), Turin, Pinerolo, Carignano, Giaveno (1871-1903). Nevertheless, even in this period it did not cease to carry on, in the dioceses where it managed to maintain itself, a vast missionary work (the single Fr. G. Ferrero gave more than 800 popular missions) and retreats for the clergy, and a large contribution of serious religious propaganda with numerous ascetic, hagiographic and propagandistic works by the priests G. Giordano, G. B.

Isnardi, Fr. Gastaldi (the first biographer of Cottolengo) and the considerable mass of various works of Msgr. G. Berchialla, archbishop of Cagliari (1881-92).

From 1900, connected at first with the last great persecution of Combes and the return of the religious from France to Italy, a period of slow but lasting reconstitution began. The Congregation now numbers about thirty communities in Italy, France, Austria, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia. It directs various seminaries in Italy and in America; through circles of religious culture and lending libraries in all its houses it attends to the diffusion of the Catholic press; it devotes itself especially to the religious organization of the people through parochial apostolate and workers' apostolate in the factories.

Tommaso Piatti

VII. OBLATES OF SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES

They were founded in the spirit of St. Francis de Sales, under the impulse of the venerable Mary of Sales Chappuis, in the Visitation monastery of Troyes by the chaplain of the monastery, Louis Brisson, in 1871.

The Congregation devotes itself to the various works of the priestly and parochial ministry, to the instruction and education of the young, and to missions. The vows taken are simple, annual for the first three years, then perpetual. At present the Congregation, approved by the Holy See in 1890, numbers over 850 religious with houses in France, Italy, Greece, Austria, Switzerland, America, and two vicariates in South Africa.

Silverio Mattei

VIII. OBLATES OF SAINT JOSEPH OF ASTI

Institute founded in Asti by the priest Giuseppe Marello, later bishop of Acqui, in 1878.

Its beginnings were extremely humble, marked by extreme poverty and strong opposition, also because the new institution lacked a character of its own. At first, in fact, the religious devoted themselves to manual labor, teaching catechism in the parishes and attending to the adornment of churches. But later the nature of the Congregation took clearer shape, and its members devoted themselves to study, undertook the exercise of the ministry in parishes and missions, and the education of youth in schools, Sunday oratories, colleges, patronages, orphanages and vocational schools. On 18 March 1901 it was erected as a congregation of diocesan right, and on 11 April 1909 came the decree of praise and the approval of the Constitutions. Today the Oblates of St. Joseph are spread not only in Italy, but have flourishing missions in the Americas and the Philippines, and number 350 religious with about 80 houses.

Pio Stefani

IX. OBLATE CONVICTRESSES OF THE MOST HOLY CHILD JESUS

They originated in Rome in 1672 through the work of Fr. Cosimo Berlinzani, of the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God, and of Cosima Moroni, for the religious education of the girls of the common people.

They adopted the Rule of St. Augustine. Other independent houses later arose in various cities of Italy, which in 1917 were united under a single superior general. They have nurseries, kindergartens, schools and number over 200 sisters in 18 houses.

Silverio Mattei

X. OBLATE OF THE HEART OF JESUS

An institute derived from a small community called the "Victims of the Sacred Heart," dedicated especially to reparation, under Grottaferrata, at the prompting of the abbot of the Basilians.

In 1894 the new foundation was inaugurated, which on 1 April 1896 was approved by Cardinal Vannutelli. On 1 November 1916 Cardinal Cassetta, bishop of Frascati, canonically erected the Institute, had its title changed to that of O. of the H. of J., and approved its Constitutions. On 5 December 1947 the Sacred Congregation of Religious raised the Institute to the rank of congregation of pontifical right and revised its Constitutions.

The sisters consecrate themselves to a life of reparation to the Heart of Jesus, of prayer for the sanctification of the clergy, and of work for the promotion of vocations, with colleges for boys and retreat houses for priests in need of help and rest. The generalate house is at Grottaferrata.

Agostino Pugliese

XI. OBLATE SISTERS OF THE ASSUMPTION

Institute founded in 1865 by Fr. E. d'Alzon, already founder of the Priests of the Assumption. In 1890 it divided into two distinct groups.

The first, with its generalate in Nîmes, received the decree of praise in 1892, but developed little; in 1927 it had barely 60 religious distributed among six houses. The second, with its generalate in Paris, had a more flourishing development; in 1927 it counted about 400 members and 34 houses; but it had always remained of diocesan right. The union between the two groups was effected by decree of the S. Congr. of Religious on 22 June 1926. The Institute thus united was declared of pontifical right and had its Constitutions approved for the first time for a seven-year period on 3 July 1934, and then definitively on 27 Oct. 1947.

The special purpose of the Institute is the apostolate especially among the dissidents and the "Orthodox." For this it has schools and other missionary works, above all in the East. In 1950 the sisters numbered 567, the novices 32, distributed among 56 Houses.

Agostino Pugliese

XII. OBLATES OF THE MOST HOLY REDEEMER

A female religious institute founded by Antonia de Oviedo y Schontal della Misericordia at Ciempozuelos (Spain), in 1864, for the instruction and rehabilitation of fallen young women. It was approved by the Holy See in 1895 and is widespread in Spain with 29 houses and more than 500 religious.

Silverio Mattei

XIII. OBLATE SISTERS OF SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES

A religious institute for women founded in Troyes in 1868 by Françoise Salesia Aviat under the guidance of Fr. Brisson and of Marie Chappuis, to come to the aid of young working women with schools, family homes, boarding schools, and workshops. Expelled from France, they also spread to other regions of Europe. They were approved by the Holy See in 1911. There are 44 houses, with over 450 nuns.

Silverio Mattei