AMERICA/COLOMBIA - World Mission Sunday: “We must be missionary cooperators not only on Mission Sunday, we offer our spiritual and material efforts that Jesus Christ may be known by everyone"

Bogota (Agenzia Fides) - "The theme of our Mission Sunday poster this year is ‘All the Churches for all the world’, the theme chosen by the Pope to invite Catholics to help promote, form, send and support missionaries to all the countries and cultures of the world to announce the Gospel and to help young Churches to grow" National Pontifical Mission Societies director in Colombia Fr. Héctor Luis Valencia López, said in a report to Fides. “Two elements define the theme of World Mission Sunday: All the Churches - All the World. This is the universal nature of the mission which Christ entrusted to His community" Fr. Héctor Luis continued.
Mission Sunday material prepared and distributed by the national PMS office provides information and advice for animators of Holy Childhood, youth groups, priests, religious, seminarians, animators of missionary sick people and teachers of religious instruction. The material contains brief comments on Pope Benedict XVI's Mission Sunday message 2007 addressed to the different groups: young people are reminded of the Pope's message launched in Brazil when he urged young Catholics of Latin America to keep God's Commandments and strive to evangelise young people distant from the Church; priest and religious are reminded that Mission Sunday is an "opportunity to become more aware of the missionary mandate, to work our spiritual and formative programmes to favour cooperation among diocesan Churches and to prepare new missionaries to spread the Gospel in our day" and they asked to pray intensely for the missions; animators are given a guide on how to encourage the sick to offer their sufferings for the Mission "on Mission Sunday they can offer their pain, their lack of comfort, painful treatment, inability to walk, solitude, to God"; Teachers of religions are offered criteria for orienting children to the missionary dimension, first of all with witness of life, encouraging them to join Holy Childhood groups and Youth Mission Groups and to collect offerings for the missions to help their brothers and sisters in need, and also the help young people discover the Christian missionary vocation, as a priest, a religious and also as a lay person,
The PMS Colombia ask the dioceses to launch a series of activities in the missionary month of October putting the celebration of the Eucharist at the centre. "We must be missionary cooperators not only on Mission Sunday, we offer our spiritual and material efforts that Jesus Christ may be known by everyone”. (RG) (Agenzia Fides 18/10/2007; righe 34, parole 459)