Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - On the occasion of World Mission Sunday, which falls this year on 23 October, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe kindly agreed to give an interview to Fides News Service. The Cardinal spoke in Italian, here is our English translation
Your Eminence this Year the celebration of Mission Sunday coincides with the solemn closing of the Year of the Eucharist and also the closing of the 11th general Synod of Bishops, furthermore this is the first Mission Sunday in the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI and the special annual Mission Sunday Message was actually the last message written by our beloved late Pope John Paul II! What are your reflections on these special circumstances?
This is a good question because the Gospel teaches us to pay attention to the signs of the times and to what has been happening recently in the history of the Church. Looking back at recent years after the last century of the great wars and the devastating consequences of homicidal ideologies of militant Nazism and Communism, we see the beautiful design woven by Divine Providence and it appears to introduce us to a new era, one eminently missionary. I say this because as Tertullian used to say, "the blood of martyrs is seed of new Christians"; and how much blood Christians shed because of faith in Christ in the last century!
This year Mission Sunday is particularly filled with spiritual intensity connected as it is with two pontificates that of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. It was said of World Youth Day last August in Germany that is was the ‘Day’ of two Popes. We can say the same of Mission Sunday 2005 since it is blessed with the apostolic zeal of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
The Servant of God John Paul II, on the threshold of the New Millennium, addressed the programmatic words Duc in altum to the whole Church, urging all Catholics, bishops in particular to put out into the deep and to speak of Christ without hesitation at all times, opportune and inopportune. Today in fact we tend to speak ever less about Christ even in contexts where it is our duty to speak of him and I underline duty. If we hesitate to speak of him when it is opportune, imagine what we do when we think it might be inopportune. So where is our courage, our boldness, our proclamation?
"Duc in altum" put out into the deep and "arise let’s go"… were God’s urgent calls to the Church in our day! The exceptional apostolic act of Christ culminating in giving of self for the redemption of the world impels us not to rest on our certainties, but to arise and strain with holy restlessness to carry the Gospel to all men and women who have yet to encounter God Three in One. We were reminded of this holy restlessness by Benedict XVI at the very beginning of his Pontificate. And here I quote a magnificent ‘missionary’ passage taken from the Pope’s homily on the day of the inauguration of his Pontificate, 24 April:
"The pastor must be inspired by Christ’s holy restlessness: for him it is not a matter of indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so many kinds of desert. There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction. The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance".
John Paul II handed the baton to his faithful colleague and friend for many years Joseph Ratzinger who like his Predecessor in his very first homily as Supreme Pontiff emphasised the Church’s missionary dimension. I think this passage reveals one of the new Pope’s deepest intuitions and intentions: utmost importance must be given to the Church’s missionary dimension.
In this sense, I think "Duc in altum" will be a principal mark of this Pontificate which has just begun bathed as it is in the missionary light of the previous one. So how can we fail to rejoice for this providential coincidence that Mission Sunday falls the day of the conclusion of a special Year of the Eucharist called to reawaken ‘wonder’ for the Eucharist which, if authentic, fills us with a longing to share this wonder with those who have never heard about Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life. Close to five billion of the world’s people are unable to receive this "daily Bread", this bread transubstantiated into the Body of Christ in the hands of the priest; these men and women know nothing of God’s gifts, there are there in the "desert" waiting for us who by this Bread are nourished.
So your Eminence, we face a new re-launching of missionary activity?
I am no prophet but I am deeply convinced that the pontificate of Benedict XVI will have its own missionary dynamism which will surprise us all. Missionary dynamism does not entail extraordinary undertakings, it means, I think, being possessed by holy restlessness to carry to all the truth, knowledge and love of Christ. Holy restlessness fired by the certainty that Christ is the only Saviour of the world and the Church has his mandate to lead every man and women from every continent and in every age to Jesus, the fullness of the Truth.. Benedict XVI is filled with holy restlessness.
Not by chance, before taking possession of his Cathedral, St John in the Lateran, the Holy Father made a pilgrimage to the "roots of mission", he went to St Paul’s Basilica and he said: " May the Lord also foster a similar love in me, so that I will not rest before the urgent need to proclaim the Gospel in our world today. The Church is by nature missionary; her urgent duty is to evangelise "(Homily April 25 2005). The Lord will surely nourish holy restlessness in the heart of His Vicar, so he may transmit it first of all to the bishops of the Church and we will see its fruits!
Missionary dynamism is born of faith in the Risen Christ; in this sense the roots of mission are where this faith is lived most deeply, as it was lived Peter, Paul and the other Apostles, fortified by the words "go out into the whole world…".
When faith in the Risen Christ weakens, so does missionary dynamism. But we who are certain in our hearts that there is no other Way, Truth and Life than that of Christ, the incarnate Son of God, must put all the people, means and structures we have at the service of this holy restlessness to all win hearts for Christ. Our decisions are taken in view of this, our programmes stem from the impelling desire to cry Christ to the world. But unless we are conquered, how can we conquer?
Your Eminence "holy restlessness" could be a key to understanding this Pontificate?
Indeed. I believe that "holy restlessness" to make Jesus known to all men and women is a special mark of Benedict XVI in absolute harmony with the our late "missionary Pope" John Paul II.
Holy restlessness to "let the Word of God run on the roads of the world" can prompt original projects. Jesuit fathers sailed to the distant lands of America to win souls with the Gospel, they were fired by the same holy restlessness which could be described as the holy restlessness of hearts conquered by Christ! They put everything they had at the service of this "conquest for Christ" even music which gradually drew the native peoples to Christ, the Truth.
We stand before an enormous missionary challenge, greater than ever even, in first world secularised countries and I believe Benedict XVI has been especially prepared "ad hoc" for this eminently missionary time. Not by chance in fact he has declared ‘war’, - forgive the expression - , on another underhand ideology: relativism.
Relativism is the number one enemy of missionary dynamism. People who are not interested in mission have been infected by this relativism. In the end in this pernicious process everything is relativised, even God and the existence of God!
The Year of the Eucharist concludes with the Synod of Bishops on the theme "Eucharist, source and summit of the Church’s life and mission" and on World Mission Sunday. The Year of the Eucharist is coming to its conclusion, but missionary work to carry the Lord of the Eucharist to the "spiritual deserts" of our day has by no means reached its conclusion. The Eucharist is Christ’s love in totality: Christ is totally present, as the great Saint Thomas Aquinas said, totally present in the Host and in its every fragments. In no way can faith in Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament be relativised. One either believes that Christ is present and living in the Bread of the Eucharist, or one does not. With faith in the Eucharist, as with all the great Truths of our Faith, there can be no half measures.
The same is true for mission. Local Churches more missionary and less missionary do not exist. All Christians are potential missionaries and they become missionaries when, like Christ, they break the bread of the word with others and receive the same Eucharist. Mission Sunday is not simply a celebration, it reminds us of a truth: Christianity is authentic when it is missionary, the Church is truly alive when she opens wide her arms to offer Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life to the world.
Pope Benedict XVI like John Paul II presented himself to the Church and to the world with his arms open wide, and we too must do the same.
Your Eminence, you speak of mission territories, but which are the mission countries and where are they?
The Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples is entrusted with 1,069 (30%) of the Church’s ecclesiastical circumscriptions: archdioceses, diocese, territorial abbacies, apostolic vicariates, prefectures, administrations, missions sui juris, military ordinates. Most of the territories for which the Missionary Congregation is responsible are in Africa, 477, the rest are in Asia 453, America 80, Oceania 45 and even in Europe there are 14 mission territories.
The Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples publishes a directory of these territories, "Guida delle Missioni cattoliche 2005", which came out recently in a new edition updated to 31 December 2004. (In Italian only translator’s note). The Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples is at the service of the Pope as "centre of promotion direction and coordination" of Catholic missionary activity and missionary cooperation all over the world. From the directory we learn that the number of people living in territories and entrusted to the care of Congregation is 2,850,329,546 of whom 200,284,770, or 7.02%, are Catholics. The percentages of Catholics in mission territories by continent are as follows: 20.23% in Africa, 56.88% in America, 1.8% in Asia, and 25.9% in Oceania and 10.8% in Europe. At the service of mission Ad Gentes (to the peoples) there are 85,000 priests, 28,000 Brothers, 45,000 women religious and 1,650,000 Catechists.
And what is the Congregation doing for the formation of future priests in mission territories?
Before giving technical details I would quote Pope Benedict XVI with regard to priests. Without priests, where would be no Eucharistic Celebrations, and the Sacrament of the Eucharist is all the more effective when there is the personal holiness of the priest. The Pope said: "We all know that the validity of the Sacrament does not depend on the holiness of the celebrant but its effect for himself and for others will be all the greater the more he lives it with profound and ardent love and a spirit of fervid prayer”. (Angelus 19/9/2005)".
With regard to statistics. The Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples through the Pontifical Society St Peter Apostle, follows the spiritual and academic formation of student priests in 307 major inter-diocesan seminaries, 516 minor seminaries and 101 propaedeutic seminaries, helping also with their upkeep. In 2004 the CEP assisted 80,297 seminarians mostly in Africa and Asia.
In Rome in 2004 there were 331 students priests from 54 different countries lodged at two colleges dependent on the CEP, St Peter Apostle and St Paul Apostle, and studying at the Pontifical Urban University or other Pontifical universities. We also have Foyer Paolo VI which is home for 79 students nuns from 21 different countries in Rome for further studies also at Urban College. This year on 4 October we inaugurated San Francesco College for about forty men and women catechists studying in Rome.
The highest expression of Propaganda Fide for cultural and scientific formation of pastoral workers in mission territories is undoubtedly the Pontifical Urban University, frequented by about a thousands students and with a teaching body of 130 members. Urban College has always been an institute with a missionary character at the service of the Church in her missionary-apostolic mandate, forming missionaries and experts in missiology and other disciplines, necessary for missionary activity. Since 1966 Urban College has accepted affiliations with seminaries and institutes of philosophy, theology, missiology and Canon Law in Africa, Asia, America, Oceania and in Europe.
Mission also includes education for young generations and health care...
In fact an important part of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples activity in mission territories concerns education and formation in some 42,000 Catholic schools, medical care involving 1,600 hospitals, over 6,000 dispensaries, 780 care centres for people with leprosy. All these Catholic institutions, schools and hospitals etc., are run by the Church but they are open to all people irrespective of religion, social class, caste...we could give countless examples in this regard.
What is the role of the Pontifical Mission Societies ?
The Pontifical Mission Societies whose activity is directed by the supreme committee chaired by the Cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, have the task of fostering awareness of the Church’s missionary nature and the missionary duty of every Christian. World Mission Sunday, the principle event in the whole year of missionary animation was started at the request of the Propagation of the Faith. The four Pontifical Mission Societies, founded at different times, form one institution with one common fundamental purpose: to foster a spirit of universal mission among the people of God.
The task of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith is to encourage Catholics to support the missions with prayers and sacrifices and collect money offerings in support of the work of evangelisation. The Pontifical Society of Holy Childhood fosters missionary awareness among children and adolescents and leads them to be help their brothers and sisters in need with spiritual and material aid. The Pontifical Society St Peter Apostle is responsible for offering spiritual and economic assistance to seminaries and houses of formation in mission territories. The Pontifical Missionary Union, the soul of the other three, fosters missionary and missionary vocations awareness among seminarians, priests and religious. (Agenzia Fides 22/10/2005)
