Pauline sisters complete 50 years in Goa

Their mission was to use all means of communication available at any given point of time to proclaim the Gospel.

Panaji:  The Pauline Sisters will complete their 50 years of presence in Goa tomorrow.

The Pious Society of the Daughters of Saint Paul, or DSP opened its house in Goa in Sept. 1964. The house was opened by sisters Immaculata Vaz and Grazia Vaz on the invitation of Bishop Francisco Rebeiro.

The congregation’s first house in India was opened in Mumbai with four Italian sisters in 1951. With a few Indian members, the congregation then branched out to Calcutta in 1956 and Bangalore in 1962 in its effort to reach out to more people in India.

The congregation's founder, Blessed James Alberione was inspired by light from the Eucharist. After reflection and prayer, the young priest, with the support of his personal spiritual director Canon Chiesa founded the Pious Society of Saint Paul, a congregation for men, in 1914, as the beginning of the First World War.

Their mission was to use all means of communication available at any given point of time to proclaim the Gospel.

Further prayer and meditation prompted the founder to involve women in the same mission. The result was the launch of the Congregation of the Daughters of Saint Paul in 1915. Young Thecla Merlo, his first woman collaborator in the media mission, became the first member and, in effect, the co-founder of the congregation.

He went on to establish three more religious congregations and four Secular Institutes, all of them together now comprise what has come to be known as the Pauline Family.

Before Father Alberione entered the scene, Christianity used pulpit and classroom to spread its message for 19 centuries. The young Italian priest worked in an era of rapid changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in European and world cultures.

In the past one century, the Paulines have reached millions of people on every continent in the world through social media.

Father Alberione wanted the members of his Pauline Family to reach out to people of the 20th century with the same zeal, flexibility and intelligence that drove Saint Paul in the first century.

Source: Catholic online