World Mission Day 2021: a concrete gesture to help Christian communities in need of aid and to support the proclamation of the Gospel to the ends of the earth

World Mission Sunday will be celebrated on Sunday, October 24 on the theme "We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20). In the message released for this anniversary, Pope Francis explains that the theme is "an invitation to each of us to “take charge” and to make known what we carry in our hearts. This mission is and has always been the identity of the Church: «it exists to evangelize» (St. Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, 14). Our life of faith grows weak, loses its prophetic power and its ability to awaken amazement and gratitude when we become isolated and withdraw into little groups. By its very nature, the life of faith calls for a growing openness to embracing everyone, everywhere". 

World Mission Day was presented at a press conference in the Vatican on October 21, during which His Exc. Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples; His Exc. Mgr. Giampietro Dal Toso, President of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) and Assistant Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples; Sister Alessandra Dalpozzo, Mother General of the Franciscan Handmaids of Mary spoke. "We cannot keep to ourselves the encounter with God who has touched our hearts and who has done marvelous works. Like the apostles, let us share the love that we have experienced", Cardinal Tagle underlined. "What we have received from God is a gift to others. And the more we share it, the more our faith grows. If we keep it to ourselves, our faith weakens over time. If we keep it in a small group, it becomes the business of an elite. Missionaries are inspired by the love of God to come out of themselves, of their fears, to reach all nations, geographical and existential. For a fundamental reason: gratitude. They are grateful people". The Prefect of "Propaganda Fide" pointed out that "spirituality and the encounter with God are the source of the missionary, who is always rooted in Christ. He tells 'a story of love', lived with Jesus and brings compassion from Christ to the world". 

In his speech Mgr. Giampietro Dal Toso, President of the Pontifical Mission Societies gave a reflection on the figure of Pauline Jaricot, the foundress of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, whose beatification in 2022 will take place within the framework of important anniversaries. In fact, next year more anniversaries related to the missionary world will be celebrated: 400 years of the Congregation of "Propaganda Fide", 200 years since the foundation of the first missionary Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith; 100 years of the elevation to Pontifical of three of the four Societies; and 150 years since the birth of Blessed Paolo Manna, founder of the Pontifical Missionary Union. 

The President concluded by recalling that the help given to the mission communities by the PMS, including that destined for the construction of the chapel in the mission of Atambua, on the island of Timor, Indonesia, by the Franciscan Handmaids of Mary presented at a press conference by Sister Alessandra Dalpozzo, was also possible thanks to the support of the Popes, who regularly promoted the charism of the Pontifical Mission Societies, and quoted what Pope Francis wrote in the message for World Mission Day of 2021 and in the one published in 2016, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Day, in which the Pope wrote: "It is appropriate then to recall the wise instructions of my Predecessors who ordered that to this Society be destined all the offerings collected in every diocese, parish, religious community, association and ecclesial movement throughout the world for the care of Christian communities in need and for supporting the proclamation of the Gospel even to the ends of the earth. Today too we believe in this sign of missionary ecclesial communion".