A ZENIT DAILY DISPATCH
A ZENIT DAILY DISPATCH
Missionary Community of Villaregia
A Vocation to Mission and Communion
VATICAN CITY, 16 JUNE 2006 (ZENIT)
Here is the description of the Missionary Community of Villaregia which appears in the Directory of International Associations of the Faithful, published by the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
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Official name: Missionary Community of Villaregia
Acronym: CMV
Established: 1981
History: CMV was founded following a meeting in Cagliari at the beginning of 1975 between Father Luigi Prandin and Maria Luigia Corona, who discovered they had a common specific vocation to communion and mission, while pursuing different paths toward it.
A group of young people gathered around them who wished to give themselves to God in order to create a Iife of communion and relationship receptive to the mission.
The first Community was set up in 1981 at Quartu Sant'Elena with the blessing of the Archbishop Giuseppe Bonfiglioli of Cagliari. After beginning its work in Sardinia, the missionaries arrived in Veneto where Monsignor Sennen Carra, the bishop of Chioggia at the time, erected it as a pious institution in 1984, giving it canonical recognition.
On May 26, 2002, the Pontifical Council for the Laity decreed the Comunità Missionaria di Villaregia to be an international association of the faithful of pontifical right.
Identity: CMV sets out to create a life of intense communion, with the Holy Trinity as its source and model; it is totally dedicated to the mission "ad gentes," and lives in confident abandonment to providence.
The formation of the members, which attends to the comprehensive development of the individual person, is provided in community, and is designed to enable the members to assimilate the charism; formation for the missionaries includes theological studies; it is completed in the apostolate and in relations with the people of God.
Every CMV center provides an organic route for human and Christian growth as well as experiences of prayer and meeting with the Word of God, evangelization, missionary service and cooperation, community and Christian friendship.
The task of evangelization is carried out in the older Christian countries and in the younger churches where CMV takes on responsibility for parishes and apostolic work, in terms of its own specificity. In the old Christian countries, it works to revive and nurture an ecclesiology of communion, with outreach to the universal mission of the Church, through days and weeks of community and missionary animation, or broader evangelization projects.
It also works in schools or with groups of various kinds, in order to cooperate in providing education in universality, conviviality and solidarity.
Organization: CMV has full members and affiliated members. The full members, who make up the core group, are people united by the vocation to live in community for the mission "ad gentes," the communion of material and spiritual goods, and sharing a common apostolic ministry.
They give themselves to God with private vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in the case of the men and women missionaries, and commitment to live their married life in poverty and obedience in the case of married couples.
The fourth vow of living in community for the mission "ad gentes" unites all in their striving to place communion before all things, and to spread it to the ends of the earth. The full members are divided into four groups: missionaries (priests and consecrated men), consecrated missionary women missionaries in the world, and missionary couples.
Among the first and second groups the dimension of prayer and proximity to the poorest are particularly keenly felt and tangibly practiced through the ministry performed by some of the brothers and sisters who are called to dedicate themselves to intercession and praise (the fraternity of the contemplative life), or proclamation and compassion (the fraternity of mercy).
The affiliated members are people who find within the community the possibility of growth and commitment, using and cooperating with the service that the community offers, participating in its charism, cooperating to achieve its purposes.
The affiliated members are also divided into four groups: volunteers, members of the Missionary Commitment Groups, missionary animators and friends of the mission.
Membership: CMV has 450 full members and 8,000 affiliated members, and is present in six countries in Africa, Europe and South America.
Works: Seeing human promotion as a fundamental dimension of evangelization, CMV has set up development structures both in Africa and South America such as drop-in centers for street children, cultural centers to provide young people in financial difficulties with a place to make friends and to grow; literacy schools; medical centers to provide health care to individuals who have no opportunity to be treated in hospitals, and to educate them in food and hygiene standards to combat children's diseases; running pharmacies and soup kitchens/canteens.
Thanks to the commitment of the community, over the past 15 years in these geographic areas, two churches have also been built together with 15 chapels with premises for the catechumenate and catechesis.
Publications: Comunità Missionaria di Villaregia, published every four months.
Web site: www.cmv.it
Headquarters:
Comunità Missionaria di Villaregia
Fraz. Villaregia, 16
45014 Porto Viro RO — Italy
Tel. (39) 0426-325032 — Fax 0426-325442
E-mail: postavi@cmv.it
(c) Copyright 2006 — Libreria Editrice Vaticana [adapted]
ZE06061627
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