A Gathering Born from Mission

From January 2 to 6, 2001, approximately 70 members of the Vincentian Family, representing 16 countries, gathered in Los Molinos, in the mountains outside Madrid, Spain, for the First General Assembly of Misioneros Seglares Vicencianos—Vincentian Lay Missionaries, better known as MISEVI.

Twenty-five years later, that meeting stands as a decisive moment in the history of Vincentian lay missionary life. It was more than an organizational gathering. It brought together people whose missionary experiences had developed in different nations and cultural settings, yet who recognized in one another the same calling: to follow Jesus Christ as laypeople, in the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul, by sharing their lives with communities experiencing poverty and exclusion.

The Assembly gave an international voice, a common structure, and a clearer future to a vocation that had been growing for years.

From Temporary Experience to Lifelong Vocation

The roots of MISEVI reach back to missionary initiatives promoted by Vincentian Marian Youth, particularly in Spain beginning in the 1980s. Young adults traveled to mission territories for temporary periods, often during the summer, to collaborate with members of the Vincentian Family.

For some, however, these journeys awakened something that could not be confined to a short-term experience. Mission was no longer simply an activity undertaken for several weeks or months. It had become a way of understanding Christian discipleship and a possible lifelong vocation.

Some young lay missionaries remained for longer periods in places such as Honduras, assuming pastoral and social responsibilities alongside the Congregation of the Mission and other branches of the Vincentian Family. Their experience gradually revealed the need for a stable association capable of preparing, sending, accompanying, and supporting lay missionaries before, during, and after their service.

The idea matured through years of consultation, discernment, and patient collaboration. MISEVI began taking formal shape in Spain in the late 1990s, while similar missionary experiences were developing in other countries. The approval of international statutes in 1999 provided a foundation, but a worldwide assembly was still needed to bring the different realities together.

Los Molinos became that meeting place.

Sixteen Countries, One Mission

Participants arrived from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The countries represented included Italy, Mozambique, Honduras, Bolivia, Lebanon, Algeria, the Dominican Republic, Belgium, the United States, Colombia, France, Portugal, Indonesia, Brazil, and Spain, together forming a remarkably diverse missionary gathering.

They brought different languages, pastoral experiences, social realities, and ways of organizing mission. Yet beneath those differences was a shared conviction: laypeople are not merely collaborators in the Church’s mission; they are missionaries by virtue of their baptism and their particular vocation.

The Assembly allowed participants to listen to one another, compare experiences, identify common needs, and discern how MISEVI could serve missionaries and local communities without erasing the richness of each country.

This international character was one of the gathering’s greatest strengths. MISEVI was not conceived as the expansion of one national model into other parts of the world. It emerged as a network built from many experiences, united by the Gospel and the Vincentian charism.

Giving the Association a Face and a Future

During the five-day meeting, the participants clarified MISEVI’s identity and established priorities for its future development. They created an international coordinating structure, chose the first leadership team, appointed advisors to accompany the association, and prepared a Final Document to guide its work during the following years.

Eva Villar was selected to lead the first international coordinating team. The Assembly also strengthened the relationship between MISEVI and the wider Vincentian Family, whose members had helped nurture the association from its earliest stages.

The Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity offered not only spiritual and pastoral accompaniment but also essential practical support. Provincial leaders helped cover the costs of participation and enabled missionaries from different continents to be present.

This support reflected something larger than institutional generosity. It expressed a growing recognition that the future of the Vincentian charism depended upon genuine collaboration among laypeople, sisters, priests, and brothers.

Writing soon after the Assembly, Father Robert P. Maloney, C.M., then Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission, emphasized the significance of what had occurred. He saw in MISEVI a concrete response to the Church’s call for greater lay participation and to the Vincentian Family’s desire for closer international cooperation.

The Assembly demonstrated that lay missionary commitment could be sustained through serious formation, community life, responsible structures, and long-term accompaniment.

Beyond Sending Missionaries

One of MISEVI’s most important contributions has been its understanding that missionary service involves far more than sending a person to another country.

Missionaries require preparation before departure, spiritual and human accompaniment during their service, financial and administrative support, healthcare and insurance, and thoughtful assistance when they return. Mission also involves the communities that receive them, the Vincentian branches that accompany them, and the networks of solidarity that make their presence possible.

Over time, MISEVI assumed increasing responsibility for this entire process. It also promoted missionary formation, community life, global citizenship education, support for local projects, and collaboration with Church organizations and civil society.

The seeds planted at Los Molinos continued to grow through later international assemblies and meetings. Yet the First General Assembly remained the foundational reference point: the moment when different experiences became a shared international project.

A Memory That Still Challenges Us

Celebrating the Assembly’s 25th anniversary is not simply an exercise in remembering dates, names, and documents. It is an invitation to recover the courage of those who believed that a new form of Vincentian missionary life was possible.

They trusted in Providence before all the necessary structures existed. They crossed boundaries between nations, cultures, languages, and branches of the Vincentian Family. They accepted the responsibility of turning personal missionary enthusiasm into a durable commitment capable of supporting others.

Their experience continues to challenge MISEVI and the entire Vincentian Family.

What does shared mission mean today? How can Vincentian branches move beyond parallel projects and work more fully as one family? How can lay missionaries respond to forced migration, inequality, environmental destruction, war, cultural displacement, and new forms of poverty? How can missionary commitment remain rooted in Christ while taking an increasingly clear stand against injustice?

The answers will emerge in circumstances very different from those of 2001. But the foundational intuition remains the same: wherever a Vincentian follower of Jesus is present, the mission of the whole Family is present.

The Mission Continues

Twenty-five years after Los Molinos, MISEVI remains a living expression of the Church’s missionary vocation and of the Vincentian conviction that love must become organized, practical, and close to those who suffer.

The First General Assembly gave the association a structure, but its deepest achievement was to affirm a vocation. It showed that lay men and women—single people, married couples, professionals, workers, and families—could offer their lives to mission in a stable and distinctly Vincentian way.

The participants gathered in January 2001 could not foresee every challenge the association would face. Nor could they imagine all the communities, missionaries, friendships, and projects that would grow from the decisions they made, nevertheless, they understood something essential: mission is not a passing experience but a response to a call.

A quarter of a century later, their witness invites a new generation to listen for that same call—and to answer it with creativity, courage, and trust in Providence.

Javier F. Chento