Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides) - On the occasion of World Mission Day, Sunday 24 October, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples was kind enough to answer a few questions put by Fides.
Your Eminence 2000 years ago Jesus Christ gave the Church the task of evangelising all peoples to the ends of the earth. Today at the beginning of the third Christian millennium how must we go about this mission since we are called to sow the Word of God amidst situations of indifference on the one hand and violence on the other which threaten the good sown in the past centuries?
The Pope’s call at the start of the new millennium is explicit: “Duc in altum! Let us go forward with hope! A new millennium opens before the Church like a vast ocean on which we must sail confident that Christ is with us. Christ whom we contemplate and love calls us once again to se out...the missionary commandment introduces us to the third millennium encouraging us to have the same enthusiasm as the early Christians. We can count on the power of the same Spirit effused at Pentecost, the same Spirit who today prompts us to start out with hope « which does not disappoint » (cfr Novo Millennio Ineunte, 58).
Through the centuries the Church’s mission has never been easy or free of obstacles. It has been nourished by the blood of the martyrs, sufferings and hardship of the missions and local Christians who did not deny their faith even when tortured. No one ever thought that missionary work should be abandoned, that because of human failure, precious in the eyes of God, it would be better to withdraw to convents and communities.
The Church, born from Christ’s Paschal Sacrifice, must continue her missionary task of announcing Christ, the only Saviour, inviting people to be reconciled with Christ, aware as she is that the men and women to whom the message is destined live in a world and social-cultural context which philosophical and theological reflection call "post-modern". Today we are called to be missionaries and evangelisers at a time marked by fragmentation of values theological pluralism and consequent relativism of the question of truth. But it is also a time which manifests a new demand for meaning, a time open to the demands of hope and solidarity which go beyond the limits of human life.
In the face of this scenario, the question is how can we be missionaries of Jesus Christ today? The first and fundamental reply comes from the Spirit of the Lord: we must accept Christ without limits or conditions and courageously let ourselves we won over lowering the barriers of our human interests or egoism. In other words Christ must live and act in us. It should be said that the missionary who carries the Gospel of Christ to all peoples today at the start of the third millennium is very different to the missionary who evangelised even a few decades ago. Today missionaries are called to proclaim the Gospel in a new and difficult scenario. The Gospel of Christ does not eliminate cultures. It animates them from within and helps build universal brotherhood, a reality of communion, solidarity, to unite all the peoples of the world. The missionary today knows that he or she must proclaim Christ in a new and difficult context. Every day we see how children and women in many parts of the world where our missionaries are working are brutally abused! To counter all this the missionary brings the announcement of the Gospel of Christ who came to bring to every man, woman and child their dignity as children of God, with respect and love for defenceless children and women who suffer violence. The missionary of today preaches with his person this Gospel, this authentic message of Christ. This is also why missionaries are often killed as even recently the news has reported.
The challenges facing the missionary today are many and diverse. Christ brings peace and justice to all men and women and to situations where children, women and other defenceless persons are abused Christ offers his authentic, fundamental and necessary Gospel.
Your Eminence very often the major media circuit ignores reports from Africa of wars and famine. And it ignores even more the capillary work of missionaries on that vast continent except for brief announcements of the assassination of one of these heroes. But what is the real situation of Mission in Africa a continent where the blood of martyrs is a source of strength and dignity to build the future?
During the Special Synod of Bishops for Africa in 1994, the Synod Fathers posed the following question: "In a Continent full of bad news, how is the Christi message ‘God News’ for our people? In the midst of an all-pervading despair, where lie the hope and optimism which the Gospel brings? Evangelisation stands for many of those essential values which our Continent very much lacks, hope, peace, joy, harmony, love and unity "(Ecclesia in Africa, note 48).
The great missionary epoch, from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s, "planted the Church" in the land of Africa: this was truly implantatio Ecclesiae. After that period, local personnel gradually replaced missionaries. And slowly the number of local Churches, cardinals, bishops, priests and religious, women religious in particular has grown.
Statistics are eloquent: at the beginning of the last century in Africa there were 2,064,270 Catholics (2.6 % of the population); at the end of 2003, Africa had 140 million Catholics. In the last three years the Pope has created 70 new dioceses, appointed 85 new bishops. In the same period there has been a steady increase in the numbers of priests, religious, seminarians and catechists.
These facts are significant because they show how the Holy Spirit works with the cooperation of holy and heroic missionaries, the local clergy, with effective support of Papal representatives and with our Congregation to produce abundant fruits in a Church which is young but nonetheless rich in potential and generous adhesion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What is more we see certain phenomenon which, well-guided and encouraged, could offer hope for the future. I refer in particular to growing awareness in the Church of being missionary herself. This is a response to Pope Paul VI in Kampala (1969): "Africans you are now your own missionaries". In fact today we see a phenomenon, growing although slowly, of the sending priests and religious from one African country to another: Africa is evangelising Africa! ( cfr. Ecclesia in Africa note 75).
However there is another form of evangelisation, Africa’s openness to the Church’s catholicity and universality with the sending of church personnel to local churches on other continents. This is something which, not without joy and emotion, I have personally experienced in Mongolia. Another aspect which demonstrates the vivacity of the African Church is the involvement of lay Catholics in first evangelisation. Generous and committed catechists, despite few means, constitute an effective force for evangelisation in territories where priests and religious are not always available. The number of catechists in Africa grows steadily and many dioceses have excellent schools for the formation of catechists.
Lastly we must say that the Synod for Africa, before and afterwards, and the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Africa (1995), proved to be providential for the pastoral life of the Church in Africa and still today, they are the subject of reflection and pastoral and spiritual study. The phrase coined by the Synod Fathers "Church-Family-of-God" is giving rise all over the continent, despite some difficulties, to new renewal of local Churches and missionary impulse. Proof of this are many initiatives, also at local level, born from a journey of reflection on the part of Catholic communities and many documents issued by the Bishops Conferences .
Your Eminence, more than once in “Redemptoris Missio” the Pope stressed the need to focus missionary efforts on the continent of Asia where population growth in non Christian countries produces a growing number of people who have yet to hear the news of Christ. What is the situation of the Church and what impressions di you glean on your journeys to Asia?
We are well aware that the Continent of Asia is a challenge to the Gospel. Everything in Asia is vast: the number of people, the height of the mountains, the size of the deserts, the variety of steppe lands and fauna, but also the incidence of religion in the lives of individuals and society. In Asia there lives 60% of the world’s population. Yet, among almost 4 billion people, there are only 130 million Catholics [2.6%], mainly in the Philippines and India. In many other countries Christians are less than 0.5%. More than two thirds of the 6 billion people on our earth have yet to hear about Christ or recognise him as God. As the Pope says, evangelisation is only beginning.
After 2000 years, although she does not feel the weight of these years, the Church is called to plan missionary work as in the early Christian times. This is true especially for Asia where evangelisation encounters difficulties but also positive signs in the missionary reality, which are tangible promises for a future of hope and they fill our hearts with joy like the farmer who has sown and confidently waits for the seed to grow and bear fruit.
Visiting those lands, I have met zealous bishops deeply committed to evangelisation by no means easy; priests and men and women religious joyfully bearing witness to Christ serving their brothers and sisters; lay Catholics, catechists in particular, announcing the Gospel in areas where no religious could ever put foot, in real situations of mission frontiers. Catechists are a new front for evangelisation for the many men and women anxious to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In Mongolia I witnessed the work of sowing in a soil which heroic fatigue of many missionaries is rendering fecund and rich of future prospects. However in Asia there are also countries where the Gospel of Christ has grown to be a tree bearing fruits for other countries and even beyond the continent. This situation allows me to say that Asia is called to evangelise Asia.
Another dimension of evangelisation in Asia stems from the need for missionary activity to take dialogue with the great religions of Asia and the question of inculturation into serious consideration. I would like to underline that “no one culture can ever become the criterion of judgement, much less the ultimate criterion of truth with regard to God’s revelation”.[Fides et Ratio 71].
Your Eminence the Pope has made this the Year of the Eucharist and in his message for World Mission Day he underlined the close bond between the Eucharist and mission. Could this be a call to rediscover the importance of the Eucharist for the work of evangelisation which at times seems to rely more on material than spiritual support...
In his Message for World Mission Day 2004, the Pope writes “to evangelise the world we need apostles who are ‘experts’ in the celebration, adoration and contemplation of the Eucharist” (cfr. n.3). Earlier in his encyclical “Ecclesia de Eucharistia”, the Pope said this Sacrament “is the source and summit of all evangelisation since its goal in communion of all men and women with Christ and in Him with the Father and the Spirit” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia n.22). The International Eucharistic Congress in Guadalajara and the Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in October 2005, both focus with insistence on the bond between and Mission. I think there are already valid motives for reflection for the missionary world and others will doubtless emerge in the coming months.
In effect the Eucharist is a school and source of mission because it is an itinerary of participation in the mystery of “living bread for the life of all men women” (Jn 6,51). It nourishes and strengthens our faith and prompts us like Paul to carry Christ to all people that they may welcome Him as the one Saviour. The mission of the Church, which is a sign and means of communion between God and peoples and peoples with peoples which is realised in the Body of Christ who is the unifying centre of all humanity. The transforming grace of the Eucharist touches not only spiritual aspects but also the existential aspects of every human person, such as freedom, suffering, death... nourished at the banquet of the Eucharist, Christians are transformed and strengthened, and they receive new impulse to announce to all they meet the great wonders worked by the Lord for the salvation of all men and women. This is why the missionary evangelisation is the first service which the Church can render individuals and peoples. (Agenzia Fides, 23/10/2004)
