I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you." Jn14:18
The “Company of the Servants of the Poor” was founded in 1534 when Jerome Emiliani called together his collaborators and companions for a general assembly.
This handful of laymen and priests adopted an organized structure for the movement of religious and social reform started by Jerome in 1529, in Venice, Italy.
Their goal was to dedicate themselves to the care assistance, promotion of poor, orphans, and abandoned youth.
From its very beginning, for the good of the Church, and in order to respond to the appeals of her shepherds our Congregation has undertaken various apostolic activities inspired by the love of Christ.
With the same intense love of its Founder, our Congregation continues to devote herself to the material and spiritual care of orphans and the poor, undertakes the human and Christian education of youth and pastoral ministry.
Spiritual and Material care of Orphans, abandoned youth, and poor
Group home; Residential Centers; Orphanages
Human and Christian education of youth
Schools; Educational institutions
Pastoral ministry
Parishes
“Jerome’s attention was directed particularly to the fate of boys and girls who were either orphaned or without a family. He not only took them into the hospital, but he also began to search for them throughout the city…”
“…a deep spiritual transformation was taking place in Jerome’s soul. We cannot say exactly when this transformation occurred, but it must have been about 1525. Neither can we establish what event determined it. A very close friend of his, whose name remains unknown, gave us this information in a biography he wrote soon after Jerome’s death. He started his story with these words: “When it pleased God to move his heart and by holy inspiration draw him from worldly occupations to himself….”
”Our goal is God, source of every good, in whom alone – as we say in our prayer – we must have confidence and not in others. Our benign Lord has wanted so in order to increase in you the faith, without which – as the evangelist says – Christ cannot perform many miracles, and to answer your holy prayer to Him. He also wants to make use of you, who are poor, troubled, afflicted, wearied, despised by all, and even abandoned by the physical presence, but not by the heart of your poor and so loved and dear father.”
”He would exhort everyone to follow the way of the Crucified, to hold the world in contempt, to love each other, to take care of the poor, saying that whosoever did those deeds would never be forsaken by God”
The humble Congregation of the Somascan religious originates from the Company of the Servants of the Poor, which was founded in the Church of God by St. Jerome Emiliani under the action of the Holy Spirit.
Converted to God and deeply renewed through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, ardently desiring to follow the way of the Crucified and to imitate Christ, his Master, he became poor and dedicated his whole being to serving the poor.
Moved by divine love, he attracted other men who, out of love for the Gospel, offered themselves to Christ along with him.
Committed to all kinds of works of mercy, our most fervent Father proposed to himself and his companions a way of life which manifests the offering of oneself to Christ in serving the poor. For this reason, in the beginning people used to call them Fathers of the Works and the Poor.