My dear Sons, I cannot but acknowledge the protection of God and glorify him with you! Give thanks to him, since it is to him that you owe your existence and are constituted in a permanent way.

Moreover, to whom would I have entrusted these Works, if not to you, who, in the first place, responded to my appeal when I found myself alone with my heavy task?

It is with this aim that the Apostolic Institute for Young Negroes has been founded. It is therefore in this institute that the ultimate fate of the African missions lies.

This, your Lordship, is the information that I thought would be of interest to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide and which I have the honour to bring to your knowledge today.

Before they were assigned, these vicariates had been offered to the older congregations which were already established in Africa, and it was only on their refusal that the Society of the Missionaries of Algiers was entrusted with them.

In order to maintain chastity, we must avoid
everything that could harm this holy virtue in our conversations.

We need to be ready to go anywhere we are sent not as tourists, but as apostles.

On the contrary, let us try to make the fulfilling of their duties pleasant. They are servants, the slaves of others; let us not sadden them by our insubordination or lack of respect.

What would the parents of a missionary who is not pious, who has lost the spirit of his vocation, say if they were to come close to the mission post where he is, and they witnessed his earthly, human life? They would say, ‘What? Is it for this that he left us?