With a Eucharistic celebration this Saturday, May 30, 2026, the G50 ongoing formation course concluded in Rome for a group of 12 Consolata missionaries celebrating 50 years of ordination.
By Ernesto Viscardi *
The journey, which began on May 4, explored a series of topics including: the Word of God and Consecrated Life, the seasons of life, mission today (a visit to the sites of the Founder’s memory), dialogue with members of the General Council, and care in old age. The initiative was organized by the General Office for Formation and coordinated by General Councillor Fr. Mathews Odhiambo Owuor, together with Fathers Antonio Rovelli and Ernesto Viscardi.
The closing ceremony, rich in symbolic elements, began in the Hall of Columns at the General House. “We wish to give thanks to the Lord in a special way for the 50 years of priestly life that the Lord’s goodness has granted us — of dedication to mission, of generous service to the Church, and of love for peoples, lived in daily joy and fidelity” — these were some of the sentiments of gratitude and hope expressed at the start of the celebration. “We also wish to renew before the Lord our passion for mission, asking for the grace to continue loving our Institute, giving example and accompanying young missionaries, as artisans of communion and witnesses of the Gospel to the farthest reaches of life and the world.”
The missionaries then processed to the community chapel to continue the Holy Mass, presided over by the Superior General, Fr. James Lengarin, who in his homily recalled that “ministry, and therefore mission, is never merely activity but is grace that precedes and accompanies us.”
The Superior General leads the procession with the Centenary Torch of the death of Saint Giuseppe Allamano.
Fr. James then noted that “true mission, the kind that comes from God, has a fruitfulness that is not measured in numbers but in transformed faces, in renewed lives — because mission is not an activity but an identity; not a project but a Grace; not a merit but a response.”
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Carrying the Institute in Our Hearts
Addressing the course participants in particular, the Superior General expressed as a wish: “Today we are not celebrating only an anniversary.
We celebrate:
– the faithfulness of God, who has accompanied you on every continent;
– your perseverance, which has passed through joys and hardships;
– the hidden fruitfulness that only the Lord knows;
– the communion that has sustained you as a missionary family.
And we also celebrate a charge: to continue to be, like Paul, witnesses not of ourselves but of Christ; to continue to be, like Jesus, men whose authority is born of truth; to continue to be, like Allamano, missionaries who console because they first allow themselves to be consoled.”
“A Letter to Saint Giuseppe Allamano”
For their part, the course participants summarized what they had lived and shared in this experience by composing an imaginary letter addressed to the Founder, in the style of the early missionaries’ diaries, in which they reaffirmed their commitment to the model of missionary he had proposed. Acknowledging also the evident and rapid evolution of our world, and consequently of the thinking and practice that mission has undergone over these last 50 years, the participants also expressed their hope that across the Institute as a whole the desire to identify with that ideal of missionary proposed by the Founder – marked by holiness, consecration, and mission to the peoples – would not grow weak.
Read here the full text of the “Letter to Saint Giuseppe Allamano”
As a sign of attachment to our holy Founder, an image of him with a relic was distributed to all participants, and as a reminder of the themes addressed during the course weeks, everyone was given the book by Romano Guardini: The Ages of Life.
Frs. James Lengarin and Michelangelo Piovano (pictured) have just returned from Brazil, where they carried out the Canonical Visit to 22 missionary communities spread across the vast territory of that South American country. In greeting the G50 course participants, the Vicar General shared the joy of having seen, in the communities visited — and in particular in the indigenous communities of the Amazon — the flame of the charism left by the Holy Founder. Addressing the missionaries present, he said: “The same love for mission that has animated and sustained you in these 50 years of evangelization still today attracts young people to follow this vocation, and we must know how to welcome and accompany their call with our presence and witness.”
Words of thanks were also extended to the Superior and members of the General House for their warm and fraternal welcome, to the service staff, and to the General Council for having proposed the course through the team of the General Office for Formation and Studies. For his part, Fr. Mathews Odhiambo thanked the group for their prompt engagement with the course and their active participation. The evaluations of the course, Fr. Mathews affirmed, will be of practical help for the next G50 course in September 2026.
* Father Ernesto Viscardi, IMC, member of the Office for Formation.
