Dear brothers and friends, Today is a very special day for our Xaverian Family: it is November 5, the day in which we remember in a particular way our dear Founder and father, Saint Guido M. Conforti. This year with a very special characteristic: the celebration of the centenary of the approval of the first Xaverian Constitutions by the Church. It was January 6, 1921. A few months later, on July 2, 1921, Bishop Conforti, with a heart overflowing with joy and hope, wrote the Testament Letter to present the Constitutions just approved: “To the dear present and future Missionaries of the Saint Francis Xavier Foreign Mission Society”.
It is, therefore, a year of grace, a jubilee year for our religious-missionary Family. The Church recognized in the intuition of Archbishop Conforti a gift of God's spirit at the service of universal brotherhood. It is the “commission”, the mission that we Xaverian Missionaries have received as an inheritance; we have the responsibility of making it bear fruit and transmitting it to the future generations. The Mission of the Church in general, and the Xaverian mission in particular, is going forward thanks to concrete people who, feeling loved by God, put their lives totally at the service of His project: to make the world one family in the Lord.
During these days, we have the joy of accompanying ten of our young brothers in the celebration of their perpetual vows. Eight, nine, ten years ago, they began the path of consecration to the Lord. They did it because they felt in their hearts that God loved them, and by loving them He entrusted to them his own mission, God's mission.
