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What is FAQ?
Here are the sequence of questions we usually receive when we speak about our vocation. The questions are simple and comprehensible to everyone and which can give an idea or broaden your understanding.
To understand our life and your vocation contact the community of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate that is nearest to you or write your queries here: you will find someone with whom you can clarify!
The Aspirancy: It is the first stage of vocational discernment to verify the authenticity of the vocation and your capacity to respond to it.
The Postulancy: It is a stage that is just before the novitiate, which aims to lead the young woman to make the choice freely to follow the Lord according to our project of life.
The Novitiate: It is the privileged stage of formation in which the young woman begin to live the commitment of missionary consecration and the vows by growing gradually in the understanding and awareness and thus to verify clearly her suitability.
Juniorate: It is a period that comprises of 6 to 9 years after the first Religious profession that is made at the end of the Novitiate. During these years the young Missionary sister of the Immaculate deepens the process of human, religious and apostolic maturation in committing herself in the studies and preparing herself for the perpetual Profession.
By Perpetual Profession the Missionary sister of the Immaculate offers herself totally to God for the mission and she is incorporated definitively to the Institute.
The three vows are the characteristics of consecrated life, which expresses together the requisites to live fully one’s own baptism through an unconditional offering of oneself to the Lord and to His Kingdom.
Poverty: In order to be like Christ who became poor for us, completely available to the Father’s plan, the Missionary Sister of the Immaculate shall give up every human security, trusting oneself to the Providence of the heavenly Father.
Chastity: It expresses the union of love between Jesus Christ and the Father, the preferential choice for God, for whom, the Missionary Sister of the Immaculate chooses to live, placing all that she has at his service and fulfils her love in a charity open to all, without distinction.
Obedience: After His example, we too shall place ourselves totally in God’s hands to share fully in His mission of salvation and to reach a deep communion with the salvific will of the Father.
It is an abbreviation of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, born in 1850 to reunite the priests who were preparing themselves to go for the missions and offer themselves for the whole of their lives.
The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate are also recognized as Sisters of PIME because we share the same missionary spirituality of PIME having as our priority the proclamation to the predominantly non-Christians and going out of our own country of origin. In 1936, at the beginning of the Institute of Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate there were two fathers of PIME, Fr. Paolo Manna, the inspirer of our charism, and Msgr. Lorenzo Maria Balconi , the co-founder with mother Giuseppina Dones and Giuseppina Rodolfi our foundresses. Today, the fathers and sisters of PIME work in different continents of the world, share the missionary activities of evangelization and the missionary animation of the local Church.
The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate are present in the 5 continents: In Europe we are present in Italy and in United Kingdom; In Asia we are present in India, Bangladesh and Hong Kong-China; In America we are present in Brazil; In Africa we are present in Cameroon, Guinea Bissau and Algeria; In Oceania we are present in Papua New Guinea.
Ad gentes, ad extra, ad vitam are the three characteristics that define our missionary choices: ad gentes, mainly signifies to dedicate ourselves for the non-Christians those who have not yet heard of Jesus Christ; ad extra, signifies to live our missionary life outside of one’s own country of origin; ad vitam, signifies not for a period of time we go to the mission but for whole of our life.
Yes. Unlike the other institutes, the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate are exclusively missionaries, and all the sisters are asked to live for certain period of time in the missions outside of one’s own country of origin, most of the sisters spend their lives in the missions for many years.
This is the motto of our Institute. Fr. Paolo Manna PIME while handing over the Institute to m. Giuseppina Dones accompanied her with these words: “It is a program and a prayer!” It represents the gift that unites all the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate in consecrating one’s own life to God for the spreading of His Kingdom, which is “not a matter of food and drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit” (Rm 14 , 17) for all peoples.
The Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate is an international Congregation. The communities are characterized by the coexistence of sisters from different nationalities: Italians, Indians, Bangladeshis, Chinese, Brazilians, Cameroonians, Guineans and Papuans.
Yes, the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate are accompanied and assisted by Laity who share with us the same charism and the Friends of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate who support the activities.
