History
The Spiritans have a rich history of serving the poor and marginalized. Spiritans in the 1840s dedicated themselves to working with newly freed slaves on the islands of Haiti, Mauritius and Réunion. In East Africa, where most of the American Spiritans now serve, they began work in the 1860s by buying men and women out of slavery in Zanzibar. They opened schools and hospitals, taught people marketable skills, and gave property to those who needed it. The Spiritans pioneered modern missionary activity in Africa and ultimately sent more missionaries there than any other religious institute in the Catholic Church.
In other countries, such as Mexico, the Spiritans were invited by the local Catholic bishops to minister to Catholics in remote areas where there were not enough diocesan priests to serve the growing numbers of faithful. Today, Mexican-born Spiritans outnumber Spiritan missionaries from other countries. The seminary program is a vital aspect of the Spiritan presence in Mexico.
The core of mission remains constant—the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus to those who have never heard it at all and to those who have heard it inadequately. But the manner in which this is accomplished varies according to context and opportunity. The goal is always to establish a viable local faith community with its own leadership, incorporating the language and customs of the people.
Read more about this topic: Holy Ghost Fathers
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)