CAM – Cultures and Mission

Within the Istituto Missionario della Consolata, collecting activities have always been closely linked to the missionary work carried out in various countries of the world. Giuseppe Allamano, founder of the order, encouraged missionaries to conduct research and documentation, to learn local languages, and to gather written and oral material, in order to gain a deep understanding of the human and social context that received them and to send back to Italy news to be published in the journal of the Santuario della Consolata, thus keeping informed the readers who supported the missions. The first nucleus of the collections was formed with objects coming from Africa. Beginning in the 1960s, these were joined by materials from China, Japan, India, Morocco, and Latin America.

In 2023 the new cultural center of the Consolata missionaries, CAM – Cultures and Mission, was inaugurated. In addition to ethnographic material, it boasts a very rich collection of photographs, maps, and documentary sources.