MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER PAUL VI
FOR WORLD MISSION DAY 1968

To Our Brothers in the Priesthood of Christ!
To Our Sons of the Holy Catholic Church!

The time has come for the Missions.

Every year, for some time now, “Mission Day” has been celebrated throughout the Catholic world; this year it is set for October 20th.

It is meant to be an occasion to rekindle in the heart of every believer the awareness of the missionary vocation, proper to the whole Church; it was founded to be missionary. The Church of Christ is called catholic: that is, universal. It is called to become in fact, in history, in the ranks of humanity, what is right, what is duty: the witness of Christ for all, the means of salvation for all, the mystical and human society open to all. Not to dominate, not to replace or superimpose the earthly city; but to penetrate spirits with its light of truth, with its leaven of freedom, with its stimulus to activity in justice and in fraternity; to give the world its religious unity, in the harmony of its natural and respectable ethnic, cultural and political differentiations. It is Catholic by institution; it must be Catholic in reality. This divine plan that the Church carries with her, indeed within her, has awakened in recent times; the Church has become more aware of it. As the ways of the world have offered new communications between peoples, the Church has felt in herself the “urgency of charity” to travel them; indeed, very often, to anticipate them; she felt, by her very nature, a missionary. 

The cry of St. Paul: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (the Church has felt in herself the “urgency of charity” to follow them; indeed, very often, to anticipate them; she felt, by her very nature, a missionary. The cry of St. Paul: “Woe to me if. The cry of St. Paul: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor.9, 16) resounded in the heart of the Church, and aroused in her, with her memory, the impulse of her original vocation. The history of the Missions of recent centuries demonstrates this, as an era full of risk, adventure, heroism, martyrdom. The missionary enterprise broke out, so to speak, defying superhuman difficulties, deploying rudimentary means and men mad with courage and love. Faith has become what it should be: dynamic, irrepressible, even reckless. The joy of spreading the Gospel has repaid every effort, every sacrifice. Then came the Council, to clarify the theological principles of such a phenomenon and to urge the People of God to rediscover its native expansive obligation, and to give criteria, norms,

Brothers and Sons! This picture, which depicts a marvelous and, for certain signs, miraculous aspect of the present life of our holy Church, deserves to be observed and meditated on with all our interest. Anyone who is distracted or indifferent to this epiphany of the Holy Church should doubt their fidelity to Christ and their baptism. The Missions are ours, of each of us, of each community of believers: distant in space, they must be close in heart. If we understand the moral value which they constitute for the solidarity of faith and charity, “Mission Day” must be a moment of concentrated and active attention for each of us. This is why We address this message to you.

We would like to talk to you about the difficulties that today, for the very development of the world, they, the Missions, are encountering, and about the new methods they will have to use to maintain the positions they have reached and to develop, God willing, their growth.

But it seems to Us only right to present for your consideration another aspect of the missionary question, the already well known, but always present and recurring one, that of the “means”. The Missions still have, and more than ever, need of means: of vocations and offerings. Now let’s talk about the offers. We would do so with instinctive shyness and almost with discomfort, if necessity did not impose it on Us, and if the Council did not admonish Us not to blush to humbly reach out our hand and make ourselves almost beggars for Christ and for the salvation of souls (cf. Ad gentes, n. 39 ) .

The needs of mission territories are immense, from whichever angle they are considered. We need schools, hospitals, churches, oratories, leper hospitals, seminaries, training and rest centers, endless journeys. What weighs the most is not only the construction of the buildings, but their operation, which involves the expenditure of large sums every year for the maintenance of the systems, for the maintenance of the personnel and for the welfare system.

The mission countries can offer very little for this purpose: they are generally developing regions, sometimes very poor. Everything rests on the administration of the Diocese, whose incomes are minimal: very few benefactors on the spot, and rare elsewhere. It is often a question of uncertain, casual charity, entrusted to the good heart and to the possibilities of occasional donors.

Now, Brothers and Sons, listen to us. We must plead the cause, in a special way, of the Pontifical Mission Societies. It is not the particular interest for these institutions that prompts us to prefer these Pontifical Mission Societies to other initiatives, even if very deserving, before your charity; it is the indispensable ordering of missionary efficiency and the distribution equity of the aid destined for the evangelization of the world that impose this preference on Us. Moreover, the Council affirms it: “especially the Pontifical Mission Societies” ( Ad Gentes , 38) must be promoted.

The Pontifical Mission Societies for the Propagation of the Faith, of Saint Peter the Apostle and of the Holy Childhood have the purpose of involving the People of God in the foundation of the Church among the peoples and groups who do not yet believe in Christ, through the contribution of spiritual and material aid.

This system of cooperation in the Church’s missionary activity embraces all its components, from the Pope who is now speaking to you down to the least of the faithful.

The local bishops, men and women missionaries and priests find the only sure trust in the aid of the Pontifical Mission Societies, which every year divide the funds raised throughout the world among the eight hundred or more missionary circumscriptions.

It is a difficult, meticulous, delicate division, studied by offices and collegial bodies, but necessary for its wise and practical value of contributing to the daily bread of the missionaries. From this point of view, the Societies render a precious service: they ensure a fair distribution of the offerings and prevent there being missionary dioceses with preferential aid and others neglected.

The missionary Bishops would not have an annual aid for the maintenance of their dioceses and for carrying out their projects without the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith; it would not be possible to continue the formation of the local clergy if there weren’t the aid distributed by the Pontifical Society of St. Peter the Apostle and it would not be possible to help so many children, especially abandoned and sick, if there weren’t the Pontifical Society of the Holy Childhood.

Every Bishop, every Priest, every Faithful, even if he carries out some missionary apostolate activity, direct or indirect in personal sectors, must also give his collaboration to the general activities of the Church: that is, to the Pontifical Societies, which, while belonging to the Pope, are of the whole Episcopate and of the whole People of God. They also conform to the new methods of general planning, which preside over the development of large modern enterprises. In the Motu Proprio “Ecclesiae Sanctae” (n. 13, § 2) the Pontifical Mission Societies are closely linked to the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples through direct coordination which places them in evidence and in efficiency, so that they can increase their services with rigorous economy, and stimulate, with the active cooperation of the members of Our beloved Pontifical Missionary Union of the Clergy, the missionary spirit of the entire People of God.

All Bishops, as members of the episcopal body which succeeds the Apostolic College, are keenly interested in their growth. Indeed, in episcopal conferences they must, among other things, deal with “the specific financial contribution that each diocese, in proportion to its own income, must pay annually for missionary work ” ( Ad Gentes , n. 38, S 5).

The help also given to the Pontifical Mission Societies introduces the donor into a school of charitable teaching with the great visions of Catholicism, which do not restrict their gaze to the particular and known need, towards which the complacency of the gift made can already be a partial reward to the benefactor (cf. Matth . 5, 46-47), but broaden it to boundless amplitudes, to innumerable and forgotten needs, to workers of the Gospel who by themselves do not know how to ask and they would know who to turn to: they are mainly the visions of the immense countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania, where the Mission is often still in the first very difficult phase of the “plantatio Ecclesiae”.

Nor in the end do we want to remain silent that the generosity of the Hierarchy and of the faithful, lavished on Our Missions in this way, falls within the invitation made by Our Encyclical ” Populorum Progressio “, because it is assigned with knowledge of the facts, with wisdom aimed at the systematic elevation of the populations assisted by the Missions and with that relative continuity which allows the small seed to grow into a strong and leafy tree; thus really contribute to that development of the Peoples, which must bring them from. incipient civil and moral vitality to self-sufficiency worthy of free and modern nations.

Brothers and Sons! Let this speech of Ours not bore you; but rather an echo of Our anxieties for the diffusion of the Gospel; echo of Our gratitude for what you have already done for the benefit of the Missions; echo of Our encouragement to do more and to do more; echo especially the solemn words of Christ: «Give and it will be given to you; a good measure, pressed down, shaken and running over, will be poured into your lap. . .” ( Luke 6, 38).

We could not reward you; but Christ, yes; and this is what we wish for by sending Our Apostolic Blessing to all the benefactors, supporters and protagonists of the Missions.

 PAUL VI

 

 

Credit: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, publisher of the official documents of the Holy See