Recognising themselves as members of the one body of Christ, all Catholics should sense an urgency to share the Gospel message of God’s love with others and to welcome them as brothers and sisters, Pope Leo XIV said yesterday. Source: CNS.
“Our world, wounded by war, violence and injustice, needs to hear the Gospel message of God’s love and to experience the reconciling power of Christ’s grace,” the Pope said when he met more than 120 national directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies.
Working in coordination with the Dicastery for Evangelisation, the societies are: the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, the Society of St. Peter Apostle, the Holy Childhood Association and the Missionary Union of Priests and Religious.
In Australia, the Pontifical Mission Societies is known as Catholic Mission.
The societies raise awareness about the foreign missions, educate Catholics of all ages about their responsibility to be missionary disciples and raise money to support the missions and missionaries.
The work of the societies “is indispensable to the Church’s mission of evangelisation, as I can personally attest from my own pastoral experience in the years of my ministry serving in Peru,” said the Pope, who spent more than two decades in Peru as a missionary and a bishop.
Raising missionary awareness among all Catholics and helping them take responsibility for sharing the Gospel “remains an essential aspect of the church’s renewal as envisioned by the Second Vatican Council,” the Pope said, and it is “all the more urgent in our own day”.
“We are to bring to all peoples, indeed to all creatures, the Gospel promise of true and lasting peace, which is possible because, in the words of Pope Francis, the Lord has overcome the world and its constant conflict ‘by making peace through the blood of his cross,’” he said.
Pope Leo asked the national directors “to give priority to visiting dioceses, parishes and communities, and in this way to help the faithful to recognise the fundamental importance of the missions and supporting our brothers and sisters in those areas of our world where the Church is young and growing.”
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Missionary discipleship contributes to peacemaking, pope says (By Cindy Wooden, CNS)
