Meeting of the major superiors
The major superiors of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood gathered at St. Charles Center from Sept. 7–11 with a shared mission to discern where the Holy Spirit is leading the congregation.
Leading that discernment is Fr. Emanuele Lupi, C.PP.S., moderator general of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood. For Fr. Emanuele, the meeting was fundamentally about taking the pulse of the congregation one year after the 2025 General Assembly and asking an important question: How are we putting its message and six core values into practice?
Fr. Emanuele sees the six core values as much more than organizational priorities. They give contemporary expression to the congregation’s historic patrimony and charism, touching on renewal and conversion, community life, mission, spirituality, leadership, and relationships with lay associates and the wider Precious Blood family. Together, he says, they embody the three pillars traditionally at the heart of the congregation — mission, community life, and spirituality — while giving those pillars renewed expression for the world in which the Missionaries serve today. “The core values represent us,” Fr. Emanuele says. “They make actual, for these days, the historical patrimony of the congregation.”
That understanding also shapes how Fr. Emanuele views the role of the General Curia. Rather than directing the provinces from above, he believes the General Curia should serve as a resource, walking alongside major superiors and helping them bring the General Assembly’s vision to life. “Our work mainly is to mentor, to walk together with the units, the directors,” he says.
Fr. Emanuele says the major superiors weren’t brought together to receive a predetermined agenda. Instead, the General Curia proposed topics and invited the major superiors to bring their own experiences, concerns, hopes, frustrations, and ideas to the conversation. “We want to listen to them, and we want them to listen to each other, in order to build together what is going to come,” he says. That spirit has already created what Fr. Emanuele describes as a “wonderful environment of listening to each other and supporting each other” — a promising foundation for deeper communion throughout the congregation.
That communion matters deeply in an international congregation whose provinces often operate with considerable independence. Fr. Emanuele acknowledges that communication among the provinces remains an area where the congregation can grow. The General Curia is working to strengthen a culture of communication and to identify ways that provinces with greater communications resources can support those with fewer. The goal isn’t just to distribute information but to strengthen the bonds that unite the congregation and help its members recognize that they’re part of something larger than any individual province. “The work of the Generalate was to promote the union and to keep the communion among the provinces,” Fr. Emanuele says.
That same spirit of collaboration is evident in the proposed African Expansion Project, which Fr. Emanuele describes as a congregational initiative to be carried out in partnership with the Tanzanian Province and supported by the General Curia. The project reflects the congregation’s desire to respond to the movement of the Spirit with courage and missionary imagination. Fr. Emanuele explained that the Tanzanian Province has already expressed its openness to instigating the effort, and the next steps involve developing a plan for where and how the expansion will begin and how it can grow over time. Other provinces will have opportunities to contribute according to their gifts and resources, but the project’s foundation will be the partnership between the Tanzanian Province and the General Curia.
Vocation ministry, too, calls for both a shared congregational vision and sensitivity to local realities. Fr. Emanuele says that vocations look different from one culture and country to another. In some places, younger men continue to discern religious life, while in others, including Latin America, there’s a growing emphasis on vocation ministry and formation for adults. The challenge, therefore, isn’t to create a single approach that fits every unit, but to identify basic elements that can serve the entire congregation while respecting the particular strengths and challenges of each culture.
The meeting is also looking toward the future with hope. Among the proposals being considered is an International Congress on Precious Blood spirituality in preparation for the 2033 Jubilee. While Fr. Emanuele said the proposal remains on the agenda for discussion with the major superiors, the very possibility points toward an opportunity for the congregation to rediscover and share more deeply the spirituality that binds its members and Companions together. The years leading to 2033 can become a time to ask how the spirituality of the Blood of Christ can continue to speak to a wounded and divided world and how the congregation can be an ever-more-effective instrument of reconciliation and hope.
The meeting has already produced concrete possibilities for strengthening the congregation in the years ahead. Fr. Emanuele described proposals for several international conventions and workshops, including a future global gathering of Companions, a gathering for candidates and inquirers, opportunities for young incorporated members to develop leadership skills, mentoring for major superiors and their councils, an international retreat on renewal and conversion in 2027, and a workshop for formators. There was also discussion of creating a financial commission of treasurers at the General Curia level. These initiatives share a common purpose: building relationships, strengthening formation, developing leadership, and helping members recognize that they don’t walk alone.
For Fr. Emanuele, that may ultimately be the most important fruit of gathering the congregation’s leaders in one place. The work of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood is global, but its heart remains deeply relational. “We try to offer them a room,” he says of the major superiors, “where they can come and share their own frustrations, as well as their own successes and try to let them remember that they are not alone.” In that spirit, the meeting at St. Charles Center was an expression of the Blood of Christ spirituality itself — a community willing to listen, reconcile, support one another, dream together, and move forward with faith in the mission entrusted to it. As Fr. Emanuele put it, the goal is to leave with “something concrete in our hands.”
Bound together by the Precious Blood of Christ, Missionaries, Companions, and the wider family of the Blood of Christ are called to listen deeply, embrace renewal, and respond with courage to the needs of a changing world. The conversations at St. Charles Center renewed a sense of shared purpose and reminded the congregation that its strength lies in communion.