Across the Church, religious congregations are facing a question that is becoming increasingly urgent: how can the ministries they have founded continue faithfully when responsibility for their governance passes increasingly into the hands of lay women and men?

For the Vincentian Family, this is not simply a legal or organizational question. It touches something much deeper. How is a charism handed on? Who carries it when the people who founded and sustained institutions for generations are no longer able to govern them directly? How can schools, universities, health-care institutions, social services, and other ministries remain genuinely Catholic and Vincentian rather than simply retaining the name, history, or values of their founders?

These are some of the questions at the heart of The Blessings and Challenges of Ministerial Public Juridic Persons (MPJPs) for the Vincentian Family: A Vincentian-Setonian Reflection, prepared by Fr. Joseph V. Agostino, C.M., in September 2026.

A Ministerial Public Juridic Person, or MPJP, is a canonical entity entrusted with the stewardship or sponsorship of ministries of the Church. Such structures can provide stable governance for ministries in areas such as education, health care, aged care, and community service. Increasingly, they make it possible for lay people to assume significant responsibility for ministries previously governed directly by religious congregations.

Fr. Agostino approaches this emerging reality not primarily as a canon lawyer or organizational theorist, but through a Vincentian-Setonian lens. His report draws heavily on conversations and encounters with people already working with MPJPs in Australia, Austria, the United States, and elsewhere, as well as on research presented at the 2025 Rome Symposium on MPJPs organized around the project Inclusive Governance in a Synodal Church. He describes an environment in which theologians, canonists, practitioners, religious, and lay leaders are learning together while these new structures themselves continue to develop.

One of the most important characteristics of the report is that it refuses to reduce the issue to governance. Its central conviction is that structures alone cannot preserve mission. Catholic and Vincentian-Setonian identity will endure only when governance is accompanied by intentional formation, clear responsibility and accountability, sufficient human and financial resources, thoughtful succession planning, and continued contact with the people whom the ministries exist to serve.

Here Fr. Agostino finds an especially powerful precedent in Blessed Frédéric Ozanam and the first members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Ozanam did not receive the Vincentian charism by joining a religious congregation. He encountered it, embraced it as a layman, interpreted it in the social circumstances of nineteenth-century France, and helped give it a new and enduring form. The Society therefore becomes an important example of what can happen when lay people do more than preserve a charism: they receive it deeply enough to live it, reinterpret it faithfully, organize it intelligently, and allow it to bear new fruit.

That distinction runs throughout the report. The challenge before the Church is not merely to keep institutions functioning after religious congregations become smaller. Nor is the task simply to place competent lay professionals into governance positions formerly held by religious. The deeper challenge is to form people who understand stewardship as vocation, mission as something more than institutional branding, and charism as something living rather than something inherited and stored.

The report consequently raises questions that reach far beyond MPJPs themselves. They concern the entire Vincentian Family. What does it mean to hand on a charism? What kind of formation makes someone capable of carrying it? How much authority are religious institutes truly prepared to entrust to lay people? How close must governance remain to people living in poverty? Who will form the next generation of formators? And how will we know whether our institutions are still living the mission rather than simply speaking its language?

Fr. Agostino does not pretend that all these questions have already been answered. Indeed, one of the report’s strengths is its openness about how much remains to be discovered. But throughout the document there is a strong current of hope. What is emerging can be understood not simply as a response to the diminishment of religious congregations, but as a new possibility for the Church and for the charism itself: lay women and men assuming genuine ecclesial responsibility and becoming active bearers of traditions they have received.

1. Introduction: Putting Mission Before Structure

The first section establishes both the terminology and the fundamental principle on which the rest of the report rests: whatever governance model is chosen, mission must remain the highest priority.

Drawing on conversations with Fr. Michael Garanzini, S.J., Fr. Agostino distinguishes between sponsorship arrangements and Public Juridic Persons while explaining the particular significance of MPJPs for ministries within the Vincentian Family. For a mission to endure, he argues, it must remain adaptable to changing circumstances, rooted in its founding charism, and responsive to the needs of people today.

The section also clarifies the roles of founding congregations, Members or canonical stewards, civil Boards of Directors, and Mission Officers. Particularly significant is the understanding of Members not simply as another layer of institutional management but as a small Christian community entrusted with stewardship of mission.

Here the first Conference of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul offers a useful analogy. Ozanam and his companions were not simply an administrative committee distributing assistance. Friendship, prayer, discernment, responsibility, and personal service held them together. Fr. Agostino suggests that ecclesial governance likewise cannot be reduced to procedures and reserved powers. It must ultimately become a community capable of discerning and acting together in service of the mission.

Infographic summarizing the first section of the report. Click here to download the full report.

2. Scriptural, Theological, and Charism Foundations for Lay Synodal Leadership

The second section moves beneath organizational questions to their theological foundations. Two developments converge here: a renewed understanding of Baptism as the foundation of Christian vocation and the profound transformation currently taking place within consecrated life. Together, they create space for new expressions of charism and new forms of ecclesial governance.

Fr. Agostino situates lay stewardship within the biblical image of the Body of Christ, in which different gifts are given for the building up of the whole community. He then explores the Vincentian understanding of the Trinity, Incarnation, collaboration, service, and communion. Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac, Elizabeth Ann Seton, and Frédéric Ozanam become witnesses to authority understood not as possession but as service within God’s mission.

Ozanam is particularly significant because he demonstrates that entrusting a charism to lay people does not necessarily weaken it. Properly formed lay people who remain ecclesially rooted and personally close to those who are poor can become genuine interpreters and developers of that charism.

The report also places this evolution within the wider development of Church teaching, from Lumen Gentium through the 1983 Code of Canon Law to Praedicate Evangelium. Lay governance thus appears not merely as an institutional necessity but within the larger movement toward a more participatory and synodal Church.

Infographic summarizing the second section of the report. Click here to download the full report.

3. The Heart of the Matter: Practical Implications from the Field

The third section brings the discussion into the lived experience of existing MPJPs. Drawing on conversations and visits in Australia, Austria, Chicago, Notre Dame, and elsewhere, Fr. Agostino examines three groups whose relationships are crucial: leaders of the founding congregations, Members or canonical stewards, and Mission Officers.

For founding congregations, clarity is essential. Unspoken expectations about authority, finances, property, formation, or reserved powers can become sources of serious tension later. The clearer the governance framework from the beginning, the healthier the relationship is likely to be.

Members, meanwhile, need more than professional competence. Fr. Agostino presents their service as a potential lay vocation rooted in Baptism. They should understand the charism, accept ongoing formation, and participate in a genuinely collaborative and synodal style of discernment. Examples such as Good Samaritan Education demonstrate how seriously this can be taken through extended processes of discernment, induction, and formation.

The Mission Officer emerges as an especially important figure. The report raises significant questions about authority, independence, reporting structures, staffing, resources, and access to governance. The Mission Office cannot simply produce occasional programs; it must help ensure that mission penetrates institutional decisions and culture. Formation, Fr. Agostino insists, requires accompaniment and cannot flourish in isolation.

Infographic summarizing the third section of the report. Click here to download the full report.

4. Formation: From Knowing the Charism to Living It

Formation occupies the longest and perhaps most consequential part of the report. Fr. Agostino makes a crucial distinction: education provides knowledge and skills; formation reaches values, attitudes, relationships, vocation, and ultimately the person’s relationship with God and others. It is creative, communal, cumulative, and never truly finished.

Several convictions emerge. Formation should be rooted in Scripture and Catholic faith, connected to the founding charism and Catholic Social Teaching, and directed toward discipleship. Storytelling is particularly important because stories connect people’s own lives with the Gospel and with the lives of those served.

Another striking principle is that formation cannot be done to people but only with them. It is relational, interactive, and ultimately incarnational. It cannot simply be outsourced. Nor should it become an occasional retreat disconnected from institutional life.

The transition of charism from consecrated religious to lay leaders receives special attention. The crucial question is not simply whether laypeople can preserve what religious congregations created, but whether they can receive the charism deeply enough to develop it faithfully and creatively.

The report offers numerous practical examples—pilgrimages, small groups, retreats, reflection tools, courses, shared formation between boards, storytelling, mission-centered decision-making processes, and models such as DePaul College Prep. Together they show that formation works best when the charism becomes part of the environment, relationships, decisions, and actual practices of an institution.

Infographic summarizing the fourth section of the report. Click here to download the full report.

5. Overview of the Most Outstanding Issues

Having surveyed theology, governance, lived experience, and formation practices, Fr. Agostino identifies several questions that remain unresolved.

One is who is actually responsible for formation at every level of an MPJP. Boards, senior leaders, employees, local institutions, and even those who receive services may require different forms of formation. Yet responsibility, staffing, funding, and accountability are not always clearly defined.

Succession is another major concern. MPJPs need not only future board members but future Mission Officers and future people capable of forming others. If everyone is receiving the charism, some must eventually become capable of handing it on.

This leads to another profound issue: ongoing development of the charism itself. Fr. Agostino argues that preserving archives and repeating inherited formulations will not be sufficient. Institutions will need practitioners, storytellers, scholars, theologians, and people who remain directly connected with those who are poor and can interpret contemporary realities through the charism—just as Ozanam interpreted the social wounds of his own century.

Finally, the report makes a strong judgment: if formation is not built into the core identity of an MPJP, from sponsors to the newest employee, its Catholic and charismatic identity is unlikely to endure. Much remains experimental, but that uncertainty is part of the present moment.

Infographic summarizing the fifth section of the report. Click here to download the full report.

6. Conclusion: The Old Fire in New Hands

Fr. Agostino closes not with anxiety but with admiration and hope. He describes those developing these new models as pioneers who continue asking the quintessential Vincentian question: “What must be done?”

The future challenge is greater than preserving institutions. It is about forming communities of governance capable of carrying a spiritual inheritance into circumstances that its founders could never have imagined.

Ozanam again provides the key image. His life demonstrates that lay people can receive a charism deeply, organize it intelligently, and embody it humbly. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul did not arise because lay people simply maintained an institution previously run by religious. It emerged because lay Christians encountered a spiritual tradition and allowed it to become something living in their own historical circumstances.

That experience permits the current transition to be seen through the lens of hope rather than decline.

Fr. Agostino summarizes the challenge in a particularly memorable way: MPJPs must become communities of governance and formation “where the old Vincentian fire can burn in new lay hands.”

That may ultimately be one of the report’s most important messages for the whole Vincentian Family.

Infographic summarizing the sixth and last section of the report. Click here to download the full report.

What Might the Vincentian Family Learn from This Report?

Although the report focuses specifically on MPJPs, many of its questions extend far beyond them.

First, the charism belongs to the mission, not simply to the structures that have historically carried it. The decline or transformation of a particular institutional form does not necessarily imply the decline of the charism. Ozanam is perhaps the clearest evidence of this within our own history.

Second, passing on a charism requires far more than explaining it. People need opportunities to encounter it through Scripture, prayer, community, stories, relationships, service, discernment, and above all through personal contact with those who are poor. Formation cannot be reduced to information.

Third, the transition toward greater lay responsibility requires genuine trust. Lay people cannot be asked to carry the mission while being treated merely as administrators of something that ultimately remains someone else’s. If responsibility is real, formation, participation, authority, and accountability must also be real.

Fourth, our proximity to people living in poverty remains a decisive test of authenticity. Fr. Agostino’s use of Ozanam and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul repeatedly returns governance to this question: are our structures bringing us closer to those for whom the mission exists, or gradually insulating us from them?

Finally, we may need to become more comfortable with a future that is not entirely designed in advance. The report itself acknowledges how many questions remain unanswered. Yet the Vincentian tradition was never created by waiting until every uncertainty disappeared. Vincent, Louise, Elizabeth Ann Seton, and Ozanam discerned, acted, learned, adapted, collaborated, and trusted Providence.

Perhaps that is also what is being asked of the Vincentian Family today: not simply to preserve what we have received, but to form people capable of receiving it so deeply that they can carry it faithfully into places we cannot yet see.

Fr. Joe Agostino’s report offers much more than can be presented in these pages: concrete experiences, questions, models of formation, governance challenges, theological reflections, and resources that deserve careful discussion within the Vincentian Family. We invite you to read the complete report, reflect on its proposals and questions, and consider what they may mean for our shared mission in the years ahead. The full PDF can be downloaded from this link.