The Comboni Family is a community of people that grew around the life and vision of a missionary, Saint Daniel Comboni. He was born almost two centuries ago, on 15 March 1831, in the small rural village of Limone overlooking Lake Garda.
From Limone sul Garda, Daniel went to study in Verona at Don Mazza’s Institute. It was there that he came to realize that Africa needed to begin a journey with its own people. For a long time, the continent had been—and continues to be—plundered of its natural and human riches. This insight has remained as relevant today as it was then.
Daniel, therefore, called for a mission and a Church capable of uniting forces so that Africa could find salvation through its own people—through the regeneration of its land, its communities, and ultimately the Church itself. This same vision continues to inspire the Comboni Family today.
In the Plan for the Regeneration of Africa, which Comboni began to envision through a charismatic intuition while praying at the foot of Saint Peter’s tomb on 15 September 1864, a different world took shape. This vision was summarized in the famous motto: “Save Africa with Africa.” It expressed the dream of enabling people to become protagonists of their own present and future, beginning with the realities of their daily lives and confronting both ancient and modern forms of slavery imposed by an increasingly greedy and unjust global system.
Comboni understood that the first instrument of liberation was knowledge. For this reason, he devoted himself especially to education—forming teachers, craftspeople, catechists, nuns, and priests—so that each person could serve their community and discover their own way of living the Gospel through closeness, solidarity, and sharing.
From this vision emerged the beginnings of a missionary movement that brought together religious and lay people, men and women, locals and foreigners. United in their diversity, they sought to share needs and hopes, convinced that true salvation is shared: each person is saved when all are saved, and each person can fully become who they are when others are given the same opportunity.
Comboni’s vision of humanity was not limited to the African continent. It also extended to Europe, which needed to come to know that distant land and contribute to its development and liberation. Recognizing the importance not only of education but also of communication, Comboni founded a magazine called “The Annals of the Good Shepherd.”
Daniel lived in a very different era—one marked by the slave trade and widespread discrimination based on colour and religious differences. In such a context, he understood the importance of bringing together the different worlds of knowledge of his time: the civil, cultural, and political spheres, all working together for a common cause.
His dream transcended his own lifetime. As he once said: “I shall die, but my work will not die.” His words proved true, and his vision remains relevant today, in a world where new forms of slavery and systems of domination still exist.
Comboni’s work led to the founding of the religious institutes of the Comboni Missionaries and the Comboni Sisters, and later the Comboni Secular Missionaries and the Comboni Lay Missionaries. In this way, his passionate conviction— “If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for the mission”—continues to live on in the lives of those who carry forward his Plan and embody it as members of the Comboni Family.
These men and women continue to expand the horizons of Comboni’s dream. With open hearts, they serve the poorest and most abandoned, present today in Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Asia. They work especially in frontier situations and on the peripheries of a globalized world, recognizing the earth as our common home—a home where the Comboni Family lives out its mission each day.
We therefore present to you our Family—a Family that walks in the footsteps of Saint Daniel Comboni. It is a community that goes beyond simply being in the same place or doing the same activities. It is a space of mutual sharing, where the uniqueness of each person is welcomed as a gift, and where the richness of others helps each individual discover more deeply their own identity.
Comboni Missionary Sisters
We were born from Saint Daniel Comboni’s great dream—an ideal that fills our hearts. Comboni left us an inheritance that is both grace and responsibility, gift and mission. He saw in our identity as missionary women the image of the women of the Gospel. In one of his letters, he wrote: “If I did not have so many occupations, I would like to give you an idea of the apostolate of these sisters, the true image of the ancient women of the Gospel” (E. 3554).
Since then, the witness of Mary Magdalene, the Myrrh-bearers, the Samaritan woman, the woman who kneads bread, and the barren women made fertile—together with the other disciples of Jesus—continues to inspire our journey and missionary dedication as Comboni Sisters.
Like Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, who prepared perfumes and went to the tomb moved by love, we too feel encouraged to set out while it is still dark. Like their small community, many of our communities are small, yet attentive to the cries of humanity and of creation. We seek to care for wounded life in all its forms—even in places where gestures may seem meaningless, where others have abandoned hope. We strive to recognize signs of rebirth in history, to nurture life, and to allow the Mystery of God to transform us.
Many of us live and work in arid lands that seem lifeless. Yet experience teaches us that even deserts carry hidden possibilities of life, just as the barren women of the Bible reveal unexpected fertility. In these geographical and existential deserts, we proclaim the Source of living water. Often, the realities to which we are sent resemble barren wombs, scarred by exploitation and violence, yet still open to hope and renewal.
Our mission is to be bread, nourishment, and joy—lives offered to ease human suffering, to share life, and to build authentic, life-giving relationships. Like the woman in the parable who mixes flour, water, and yeast, we combine our knowledge with the wisdom of the peoples among whom we live. Together with women and men, and with religious and civil organizations, we knead the bread of life and build relationships of solidarity.
Our paths are many: deserts and forests, peripheries and frontiers, rough roads and paved streets, villages and cities. Our ministries are diverse, yet united by one desire—to care for life, especially where it is impoverished or exploited. This includes not only human lives but also the earth, water, and forests, which suffer the same exploitation. Care is a path of reciprocity: as we care for others, we too are cared for. When one part of life is wounded, the whole web of life suffers. Care, therefore, is both a tender and prophetic act, challenging systems that destroy life.
The unnamed woman who speaks with Jesus—the Samaritan woman—reminds us of the courage to cross boundaries and create new relationships. She shows us the possibility of encounter beyond prejudice, between different people and cultures. Her dialogue with Jesus moves from material needs to spiritual depth, as often happens in mission: beginning with basic human needs, we gradually witness to the Mystery of God, whose presence breaks every boundary we try to impose.
“Wisdom cries out in the streets, in the squares she raises her voice.” Jesus preached in streets and homes; Comboni walked through courts and deserts. Nourished by a feminine, biblical, and mystical-political spirituality, we follow in their footsteps, witnessing to relationships of mutuality and to a humanity reconciled with itself and with all creation.
Comboni Missionaries
Not without a certain pride—rooted in a deep sense of responsibility—we, the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (MCCJ), priests and brothers, consider ourselves “sons,” “heirs,” and “followers” of St. Daniel Comboni. We are inspired by that “revelation from above” which, on 15 September 1864, was granted to our founder and later expressed in the Plan for the Regeneration of Africa, conceived while contemplating the mystery of the Heart of Christ the Good Shepherd.
It was a plan that sought to involve the entire Church in a spirit of communion for the good of Africa, proposing that African people themselves become “missionaries to their own people.”
From Comboni, we inherited total dedication to the missionary cause—a cause for which he spoke, worked, lived, and died. Today, like him, we strive to be ready to take initiatives, remain constant in our work, and persevere with patience and strength even in the face of difficulties.
We call this charism—the gift of the Spirit of Jesus—expressed in the capacity to share active and messianic compassion for the liberation and fullness of life of marginalized people. It is shown in witnessing to the “crucified God,” who stands at the centre of the world’s suffering and reveals himself as gratuitous love for those who suffer.
Comboni believed that “the time of grace designated by Providence to call these peoples [Africans] to take refuge in the peaceful shadows of Christ’s fold” had arrived. He desired the Church of his time to be moved by a missionary spirit in favour of “the poorest and most abandoned.”
Today, while continuing the mission of first evangelisation, we also seek to involve local African Churches in living the same compassion of God for the least and sharing his dream of a world marked by fraternity. We hope that the young African Churches we have helped to establish will be, from the beginning, Churches-in-mission, ready to reach out even beyond their own continent.
If Comboni recognized in the African people of his time the “least and excluded” whom God raised as protagonists of their own regeneration and history, we, Comboni Missionaries today, recognise that the “least and excluded” are present across the whole world due to the globalization of poverty. At the same time, we remain aware that much of the African world still lives in conditions of deep hardship.
Present also in Europe and North America, we live our charism by engaging with the new African diaspora and the realities of an interdependent globalized world. We believe that an “African mission” must also be carried out in the post-Christian North, where many of the causes of the suffering affecting Africa and the global South originate.
In his Plan, Comboni sought to involve all agents of evangelization already present in Africa, recruiting missionaries of different nationalities so that the work would be truly Catholic—that is, universal—not Spanish, French, German, or Italian.
Following this vision, through missionary awareness and vocational promotion, we strive to be instruments of unity among the many agents of evangelization. We also work to strengthen the missionary consciousness and commitment of the entire Church, challenging it when necessary.
Likewise, inspired by Comboni’s example, we encourage collaboration within civil society for the promotion and development of people.
In a world that is increasingly pluralistic, yet often built “without the other” or even “against the other,” we believe that the traditional missionary call to go beyond one’s boundaries—an essential part of Comboni’s charism—must be reinterpreted today.
Inspired by the teaching of Pope Francis, we believe it is necessary to move from merely geographical boundaries to anthropological boundaries. This means going out of ourselves to encounter others who, in their diversity of histories, cultures, and religious experiences, become subjects of the mission and partners in the dialogue of evangelization.
Faced with many new boundaries marked by walls and systems of exclusion, we feel called by our charism to inhabit these boundaries. By inserting ourselves into their realities with openness to encounter and dialogue, we seek to transform them from barriers of separation into spaces of creativity and hope—laboratories of a renewed humanity with many faces. In this way, we continue the example of Jesus, who sat at the table with everyone, especially with those whom others refused to welcome.
Comboni Secular Missionaries
“The Lord has also chosen you to collaborate through prayer, the total gift of yourselves, and the work of apostolate, placing you in the same family founded by our father Bishop Daniel Comboni”. This expression by Father Egidio Ramponi—to whom we owe the founding idea of our Institute—addressed to the first four young women who gave themselves to the Lord on 22 August 1951 in what would become the Secular Institute of Comboni Missionaries, contains the essential nucleus of our vocation and belonging to the Comboni Family.
Papal approval on 22 May 1983 was an important milestone for our Institute, a culmination of a history that had been evolving, but also a starting point for a journey that would lead to an improved focus on our identity up to today. The recent approval of the updated Constitutions, as the fruit of a long period of reflection, is a sign of this.
Our very name, Comboni Secular Missionaries, expresses the identity of our vocation, which finds its foundation in Comboni’s own experience of Christ, in his love for the least, and in “making common cause with them”. Sharing his passion for Christ and for humanity translates into the total gift of ourselves in response to the call, through the profession of the evangelical counsels.
A passion that is nourished in the personal encounter with the Lord, from which springs the desire to share with all people, and particularly with those furthest from Him, the Good News of the Gospel, so that all may know and encounter Him and have life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10).
“Secularity” is the dimension that distinguishes the spirit and the way in which we embody the gift of the Comboni charism; this unites us with the condition of all lay Christian people who live in the world, inserted into their own social, professional, and ecclesial environment.
It is a way of living that has its reference in the Incarnation of the Son of God and that entails full belonging to history, lived with the style of Jesus, the most human of men, son and brother of all, which leads us to share the same situations, including those of precariousness and uncertainty, as the majority of ordinary people, to take on the challenges, sufferings, and hopes of humanity.
As Comboni Secular Missionaries, we are inserted, each in our own environment, in our own situation, living from our own work. This is our way of transforming the world from within with the spirit of the Gospel.
In harmony with the Gospel images of salt and yeast—simple elements of daily life that act from within—we emphasize being missionary leaven in every reality and human situation, rather than the visibility of organization, works, or structures. This is the element that unites us all in the plurality of life situations, environments, activities, and ages, and which manifests itself in a multiplicity of ways of living and expressing mission.
We cultivate an attitude of openness to frontier situations in our own country or in different countries, willing to go to the various peripheries of the world. A “going” that is first of all a going out from ourselves, from our narrow boundaries, to broaden our horizons to the whole world, especially to the poorest people, to the least…; an attitude that permeates our entire existence and that can also be realized in the choice of service in contexts or places different from those of ordinary life.
We are enlivened by the desire to keep alive everywhere that missionary openness, which makes starting from the least the criterion not only of an authentic Gospel life but also of a human one.
We feel called to live this “outgoing tension” personally, being witnesses to it also towards others in every possible way, in interpersonal relationships, in various daily situations, in Christian communities, and in every context of life and commitment, also through specific initiatives, open to collaboration with every person of goodwill.
Comboni Lay Missionaries
From the beginning of his mission, Saint Daniel Comboni brought with him lay people who could contribute to his dream for Africa, share their professional skills, and support communities in need of development.
According to him, lay missionaries “contribute to our apostolate more than priests contribute to conversion, because black pupils and neophytes are with them for quite a long period. By example and word, they are true apostles for the pupils, who observe and listen to them more than they can observe and listen to priests” (S 5831).
Comboni also believed that the formation of lay men and women was central to his missionary vision. He insisted on the principle of saving Africa with Africa: “All my efforts are directed towards strengthening these two missions where we prepare good indigenous people from the central tribes so that they become apostles of faith and civilization in their homeland” (S 3293). He also wrote: “I have succeeded in forming competent black teachers and catechists, as well as cobblers, masons, carpenters, etc., and in supplying the stations of Khartoum and Cordofan. The indigenous people thus trained are indispensable for the existence of a mission” (S 3409).
Comboni wanted us to be holy and capable. Therefore, our commitment as Christian women and men is to share both our faith and our professional experience with those who need them most.
Today, we are present in 21 countries across Europe, America, and Africa. We collaborate in international communities where lay missionaries from different countries live together, sharing life and serving communities on the peripheries of cities or in rural areas where many people are forgotten. At the same time, in our countries of origin, we live as laymen and women within society, striving to propose a more supportive and alternative way of life alongside those who are excluded.
For example, in northeastern Brazil, we promote training in ecological agriculture, helping communities strengthen their livelihoods and face the challenges posed by large estates and extractive mining companies.
In the Central African Republic, we accompany the Pygmy-Aka communities in their camps through integration schools and advocacy for the recognition of their rights as full citizens in a society that often marginalizes them.
In Mozambique, we are involved in vocational training for young people from rural communities, helping them gain qualifications that enable them to enter the labour market. We also accompany many parish communities in remote interior regions where basic services rarely reach.
In the peripheries of large Latin American cities such as Peru, Brazil, and Guatemala, we walk with families struggling to survive. Many have migrated from rural areas in search of work but face precarious living conditions and unstable employment.
In Europe, we also accompany many migrants—often from the very countries where we serve in Africa or America. Drawing from our missionary experience, we try to welcome them, support them, and help them integrate into their new societies.
We strive to live this mission beginning with our local communities, because we believe our missionary vocation is rooted in community life. For this reason, we meet regularly to pray, receive formation, share our lives and dreams, and renew our commitment to mission.
