World Mission Sunday is a day specially set aside for prayer and support to mission. It is celebrated on every penultimate Sunday of October.
In Nigeria, preparation for World Mission Sunday started in August 2022. The national office in collaboration with the diocesan directors and the Diocesan Coordinators of the four arms of PMS: HCA.POF, SPA and PMU organized their activities from the Parish to national levels using the theme of the Pope’s message for Mission Sunday 2022: “You Shall be my witnesses’ (Acts 1:8)”. This was done so that all will be familiar with the message of the Pope
The national office produced 66,000 Pope’s message booklets for World Mission Sunday and 4,000 posters which have been distributed to all the fifty-six dioceses in Dioceses in Nigeria. The Popes message was translated into four different languages (Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Tiv) so that many people can study it easily. We also produce a jingle for mission Sunday to create awareness and appeal for support. We employed the use of social media handles such as WhatsApp, twitter Facebook (Mission Nigeria) and television to create awareness about the mission Sunday.
The national office in collaboration with the Secretary general of Pontifical missionary Union, Fr. Dinh Anh Nhue Nguyen, OFMConv have organized a mission formation course for all the PMS Directors in Nigeria from 11th-15th October 2022 which will take place in Oshogbo diocese. The directors will use the opportunity to widen their horizon on mission and conclude the plan for mission Sunday celebration.
Diocesan directors of different dioceses have mapped out plans in their dioceses on how the mission Sunday will be celebrated in their diocese. There will be exchange on pulpit in many parishes on that day. The priests will be celebrating the mission Sunday mass in different parishes. This is to enable them to have a little experience of being on mission.
At the National secretariat of PMS, the World Mission Sunday Mass will be celebrated at St. Gabriel Chaplaincy, Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria by the Episcopal Chairman of PMS Most Rev. Dr. John Oyejola and will be concelebrated by the PMS National Director, Rev. Fr. Solomon Zaku by 8:00am on 23rd October 2022. The mass will be aired live on African Independent Television (AIT) and Catholic Television of Nigeria (CTV)
Massive animation has been carried out both locally and nationally especially on our Facebook handle (Missio Nigeria).
Fr. Solomon Zaku, PMS National Director in Nigeria
