“A passion for the glory of Christ and life as witness to that passion.”
— Servant of God Fr. Luigi Giussani (1922–2005)*
Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo at Nativity. From left: Sister Mariagrazia, Sister Teresa, Sister Marilu, and Sister Jennifer visiting from Rome.
The congregation of the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles was born in 2005 from the desire of a few young women to share the ideals of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Charles. In 2007, they were recognized as an Association of the Faithful. In 2019, the Sisters held their first General Assembly, which confirmed Sister Rachele Paiusco as superior general and elected the new council.
THE VOCATIONAL PATH
RELIGIOUS
The Missionary Sisters of St. Charles profess vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience and wear a habit as a sign of their belonging to Christ.
COMMUNITY
“Christ is present hic et nunc (here and now) to us in the unity that we are called to live, in the Church. The greatest thing that the world can see is that certain men and women are united among themselves like members of a single body.”
— Servant of God Fr. Luigi Giussani, Generating Traces in the History of the World
In the liturgy of the final vows, after the profession, the mother superior says to the newly professed, “From now on everything will be in common among us.”
MISSIONARY
“We know how to bring to the world only and all of what we live among us. [...] It is a form of life that’s similar to a monastic one, made up of the liturgy, silence, obedience, little technology, but it doesn’t have the stability of the monastery to lean on. It’s a life that is called to walk the streets of the world.”
— Sister Rachele Paiusco, Mother Superior
Moved by the desire to bring into the world the communion with God and each other that they live in their houses, the Sisters are open to all responsibilities and to all professions that might serve to proclaim Christ present and to educate in faith.
