Dear Visitor,

Welcome! Pope Francis has noted that “vocations aren’t the result of planning, but an encounter with God that changes your life.”

We who are members of Secular Institutes are lay persons or clergy who live the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the world and for the world. While all people are called to holiness, we make this our main profession as the Lord becomes the focus of our daily lives. We witness to Catholic Christian values by our way of life and love. We commit ourselves to a specific spirituality and lifestyle together with other members of our institutes through a sacred bond accepted by the Church.

The exterior circumstances of our lives vary – some live alone or with their family, others live in a common house with other institute members. But always, imbued by the Holy Spirit we attempt to bring Christ into the midst of the world in order to lift the world into the heart of the Father.

Consecration, secularity, and mission are the words that define our call: Belonging to God and reaching out to our neighbors, for the sake of sanctifying the world. St John Paul II wrote, “The Church also needs you to give completeness to her mission. Be seeds of holiness scattered by the handful in the furrows of history.”

Sue Larkin
President of the USCSI