A Brief History and Who We Are:
St. Daniel Comboni, from whom the Comboni Missionaries take their name, had a life marked by a passion for the poorest of his time, which he saw in the people of Africa. He was born in northern Italy in 1831 and became the first Bishop of Central Africa, when that included a large part of the continent. He died in 1881 at the age of 50 in Sudan. His last words were, "I am dying, but my dream will not die." There are many of his writings, telling of his missionary journeys and the difficulties faced. St. Comboni mentioned often the cross and Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd with the pierced heart in which he grounded his spirituality.
His vision was to "Save Africa with Africa" what we would see today as encouraging self empowerment, of the individual taking part in their destiny. He also wanted to witness as a community that was "catholic" in the sense of not only one nationality but from different nations. We are an international group from the beginning, now numbering more than 4000 priests, brothers, sisters and lay-missionaries, working in 46 countries of America, Europe, Africa and Asia.
St. Comboni's aim was that we live as a cenacle of apostles. We have the charism of First Evangelization, we go where there is no church or where evangelization is not complete and we build-up the Christian community until there is a church with local clergy that we can give the diocese, we then move to a new area and start over again.
The characteristics of this missionary service is summed up in the four following terms: “ad gentes” because we go out to peoples, areas and situations where evangelization has not yet been completed. We are missionaries “ ad pauperes” because preference is given to the poorest and most abandoned from the point of view of faith and the social dimension. We are missionaries “ad extra” because we are men of God who go outside (exodus) our personal, familiar, geographical, cultural, social and religious frontiers. We are missionaries “ad vitam” because we make a life-long consecration to God for the missions.
The Comboni Missionaries take the initials: MCCJ, which are the first letters in Latin of “Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus” (our full name ~ Missionarii Comboniani Cordis Jesu) ~ we have the Eucharist as our daily strength and center of our life, our communities are never about ourselves but are about the Church's mission!