As World Mission Sunday (Oct. 19) approaches, Father Steve Vellenga, director of the diocesan Mission Office and pastor of St. Mary Parish in Painesville, said Pope Leo XIV recorded a special video (available in the playbox below) – in English, Spanish and Italian -- drawing attention to the day. “Missionaries of Hope Among the Peoples” is this year’s Mission Sunday theme.
“He recorded the first-ever World Mission Sunday video,” Father Vallenga said. There is a link to the video on the Mission Office website.
Father Vallenga said missionary work is important to the pope, an Augustinian priest who spent much of his ministry as a missionary in Peru.
“Help me help the missions,” Pope Leo said. “When I served as a missionary priest and bishop in Peru, I saw firsthand how the faith, prayer, and generosity shown on World Mission Sunday can transform entire communities,” said in his message. “I urge every Catholic parish in the world to take part in World Mission Sunday.”
Celebrated every year on the second-to-last Sunday of October, World Mission Sunday is the day when Catholics around the world unite to support the missionary work of the Church. Established by Pope Pius XI in 1926, it is the only annual global collection that directly supports the 1,124 mission territories where the Church is young, struggling, or persecuted. On Oct. 19, every parish, in every diocese, in every country, joins in prayer and giving to ensure that missionaries can continue their vital work—building churches, forming priests, supporting catechists, and serving communities in need.
World Mission Month, peaks on World Mission Sunday, is a global celebration during which Catholics everywhere join efforts in support of the more than 1,100 mission territories, where the Gospel is being proclaimed for the first time, upheld despite persecution, or brought to communities still discovering Christ’s love.
Though formally established as a universal day of prayer and solidarity for the missions in 1922, the World Mission Sunday collection originated in the prayer circles created by Blessed Pauline Jaricot, foundress of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, one of four Pontifical Mission Societies. The 19th-century French laywoman convinced her friends, many of whom worked in her family’s silk factory, to pray daily for the missions and give a penny a week.
Funds raised during the first year were sent to the huge then-diocese of Louisiana, which extended from the Florida Keys throughout the Louisiana Purchase to the Canadian border and to China.
The Mission Office is entrusted with the promotion of world missionary education, awareness and support. Locally, the Diocesan Mission Office represents the Pontifical Mission Societies for the Propagation of the Faith, the Missionary Childhood Association, the Society of St. Peter Apostle and the Missionary Union of Priests and Religious.
Preview photo from CNS.