Messaggio della Consigliera _ Sr. Alaíde Deretti

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Rome, 14 April 2017.
Dearest Sisters,
When you receive this message, we will all be recollected and united to live the great Easter
Mystery where the suffering, the sacrifice, the death are filled with meaning because the last word
belongs to LIFE. Jesus freely hands Himself over for love, and for love He rises to show us that
the Plan of the Father is life and life in abundance! For everyone.
Today, in preparation for the GREAT MISSIONARY EXPEDITION we are invited to move to
Chile and to meet with Sr. Angela Vallese.
She was born in Lu Monferrato on January 8, 1845, in a family of farmers; at 21 years of age,
Angela left for Mornese. On August 29, 1876, she made her first religious vows. She was a
pioneer of the first FMA missionaries in America; a strong woman of great faith and intense
apostolic ardor. First she was the superior at Montevideo – Villa Colón (Uruguay), and then in
Argentina and in Chile. For 25 years, she was in Patagonia and in Terra del Fuoco. She died at
Nizza Monferrato on August 17, 1914.
For love, Sr. Angela Vallese left on November 14, 1877 for the land of Don Bosco’s missionary
dreams.
For love, she crossed the ocean, embraced peoples and cultures until then unknown. She learned
new languages; developed the capacity to communicate with the heart, with gestures, with a look.
For Love, Sr. Angela faced – with serenity and in obedience – even the first bitter difficulties: the
cold, the pampas wind, the humble and heavy work, the hunger, the danger of the trips, the
seasickness, the furious tempests, the threat of drowning, the long distances, the conflicts between
the colonists and the indigenous people, the fire that destroyed the mission of Candelaria…
For love, Sr. Angela succeeded to be always herself, in the unshakeable certainty of being
supported by the love of the Father and in the firm will to love Him more than anything else in the
world.
For love, Sr. Angela was severe with herself, always ready to serve, and sweet and sympathetic
with the others in understanding, even in foreseeing their needs and giving them affection and hope.
For love, Sr. Angela chose the heaviest and most difficult work for herself…she welcomed
everyone, interested herself about everything, approached with maternal affection, brought gifts and
made herself a gift for anyone.
For love, Sr. Angela never made calculations…she spent herself totally for the mission, for the
poor, for the littlest ones, for those who counted for nothing!
For love, Sr. Angela was the “Good Mother”, the “Madre de los Indios”, the “White Mother”.
For love, Sr. Angela lived prophetic gestures…
And we, what can we do for love in this 140th
of the first Missionary Expedition?
Dearest Sisters,
In remembering Sr. Angela Vallese, I invite every Province to think about and discern together with
the Sisters, a prophetic gesture to be assumed by the whole Provincial community on November
14, 2017. Let us pray to the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds and our hearts and make them
available to listen to what He Himself will suggest. I would be pleased to receive from every

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Province in the coming months, the prophetic gesture chosen and the meaningful repercussion
in every community and in the heart of all the FMA to revive in the Institute, the missionary
ardor of the beginnings and arouse new vocations for the mission ad gentes.
In addition, I entrust to your prayer, the Province of St. Gabriel Archangel of Chile. We can leave
on the altar of the chapel Volume II of the Institute Elenco, open to page 135, as thanksgiving for
the good done by Sr. Angela Vallese in that “blessed land”.
In conclusion, we offer our reading and reflection in dialog between the Chilean FMA and Sr.
Angela Vallese. This will help to warm the heart and prepare you better for our GREAT
MISSIONARY EXPEDITION.
With affection, a strong embrace, and remembrance in prayer,
Councilor for the Missions
Dearest Sr. Angela: I approach you with simplicity, on tip-toe, because I want to speak to
you, but above all, I want to hear from your heart, the experience you lived in the land of Don
Bosco’s dreams.
With you, I want to remember some situations present in your missionary heart that by now
belong to a distant past, and yet, give consistency and foundation to the roads of fidelity today.
The Magellan wind and solitude greeted your face in those desolate places when on
December 3, 1888, in the midst of a huge tempest, you landed at Punta Arenas in the Strait of
Magellan.
The sources of the beginning speak to us of your capacity to start from nothing, “with
small steps”. We find you courageous and passionate in building a great spiritual edifice whose
granite foundations were the foundation of a Province exposed, from the geographic point of
view, to great movements and natural disasters. Considering the life and the way with which
you led this first community, we are convinced that together with these first sisters, you left
sculpted in the then Province of St. Michael the Archangel, the certainty that “He alone is the
Lord” who gives strength in the journey of daily fidelity.
From “the window of the Valponasca” you learned to broaden your gaze and to dream of
the proclamation of the Kingdom, following life to an unknown future. As a daughter of daring
dreamers, you trusted only Him; you created a province that had no confines – the thirteen
foundations included all of Chilean Patagonia and Argentina – requiring you to cross the Strait
of Magellan in fragile boats, in spite of the implacable and ferocious waves. Your gaze and your
heart were fixed on your Lord Jesus. This is why today, your figure reminds us and makes present
“the radicalism of the sequela of Christ”. A characteristic that is alive today as well, in spite of
the limitations of your daughters.
And it continues to be alive in the young who frequent the works you founded in our
Province, the certainty of being the depositories and representatives of the charism,
continuing to give a special imprint even to the environments and places.
We feel that what we are and have is a gift that we must safeguard like a treasure. The
conviction is very strong in us of love for the young and the mission with our Help of
Christians for other young people. Even though this dimension is the proper identity of those

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who belong to a missionary Institute, we feel that contact with the sources of the first hour has
re-awakened in us your figure of a simple, solid, pioneer, erect, who with simplicity and efficacy,
knew how to face difficulties and seek the most adequate solutions.
For this reason, the characteristic re-awakened in us is your heritage: “to have
recognized that we are poor and effectively, we approach the poor without defenses and
without pretentions, to better accompany them and learn”, and remind them in the moment
they make decisions and distribute the existing strengths.
Looking from the window at the Strait of Magellan, thinking of your daughters on
Dawson Island, preoccupied about the lack of means, of solitude, and the distance…you made us
aware of “thinking of others” and taking care, above all, of those who are closest to us.
In 1873, during your voyage together with Msgr. Fagnano toward Santiago, you showed
your missionary ardor. The Cronaca recounts that together with him, you founded the house of
St. Michael Archangel, where, still today, it continues to receive the girls from the most
disadvantaged quarters of the large Santiago, to help them to be “honest citizens and good
Christians”. The Province has inherited from you “the preference for the girls of the working
classes”.
Your courage and your missionary daring have left a style of serene choice among your
daughters today.
If you came back to Punta Arenas, I believe you would repeat the phrase you said to Msgr.
Fagnano in the “dream vision” during the voyage from Ushuaia to Punta Arenas: “Blest Terra
del Fuoco that you portioned for me so much of Paradise”.
Thank you, Mother Vallese for your missionary ardour, for all you dreamed and
accomplished even without means; thanks for your imprint, keep us alert, continue to
accompany us on the paths of daily holiness.
R. A. N. fma
(Chile)