We, Pastorelle belong to the Pauline Family who has in Blessed James Alberione the common father and Founder, a prophet of the modern times who was capable of understanding the irreplaceable role of the woman at the service of the Church. 
 
Perhaps the most audacious note of his foundations was that of entrusting the pastoral ministry of “care of souls” to the consecrated woman.
 
But we leave Fr. Alberione himself to tell us the beginnings of the Family…
 The night that divided the last century from the present  (is the night between the 31.12.1900 and the 1.1.1901) one was crucial for the specific mission and particular spirit in which his future Apostolate would come to light and be lived out.

After the solemn midnight  Mass in the Cathedral  of Alba, exposition and adoration of the  Blessed Sacrament followed… Particular enlightenment come from the Host and a greater  understanding of that invitation  of Jesus: “venite ad me omnes” “Come to me, all you…”

 

Some years later…
«As soon as he was ordained priest, he was sent as a parish priest and then as parish priest in a parish of Piemonte. I was very happy; that is, the work responded to my desires: being the shepherd of souls.» 

In the short period in which he worked in the parish ministry, he sensed the great value and the complementary role of a woman in the pastoral ministry “associated to the priestly zeal”, along the words of Genesis and the experience of the first Christian community. In the first years of his priesthood he saw the necessity of a Congregation of Sisters exclusively of devoted to the pastoral mission, side by side with the Shepherds for the life of the flock. Sisters who would make the building up of the Christian community the work of their own mission.
 
The initial intuition has begun toward 1936 and on October 7 1938, the first house of the Institute opened at Genzano in Rome. The approval by diocesan right was granted on June 23 1953 and few years later, on June 29 1959, Pope John XXIII granted the pontifical right.

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On November 26, 1971, at the age of 87, comforted by the visit and blessings of Pope Paul VI, Alberione left the earth to return to the Father's House.

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He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Rome on 27 April 2003.