Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Madrid (Fides Service) - At this time of the year many dioceses in Spain celebrate Diocesan Missionaries Day to express gratitude to their own local men and women missionaries working in many different parts of the world to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Malaga diocese held the Day on Sunday 23 April and focused attention on Caicara dell'Orinoco in Venezuela, a mission it adopted 20 years ago. “For twenty years - Bishop Antonio Dorado Soto of Malaga writes in a letter for the occasion - the missionary heart of our diocese has pulsed with new life”. Caicara mission covers a territory of 45,000sq km where there is a population of 125,000; it has 30 places of worship and where there is no chapel mass is said in the open or in a private home. The local Church runs 150 schools. Missionary work is complex because it includes an urban area, a rural area, a mining area and communities of native peoples of various different ethnic origin. Malaga diocese has today 169 missionaries.
Valencia diocese will celebrate its 23rd Diocesan Missionary Day on Sunday 30 April with the slogan “Missionaries witnesses of the Church’s charity and social assistance for the poorest of the poor”. On Diocesan Missionary Day the people besides expressing gratitude to missionary for their life-witness are encouraged to offer missionaries spiritual and material support. Catholics are asked to: pray the Lord will continue to bless the Church in Valencia with numerous missionary vocations; to organise missionary catechesis in seminaries, novitiates, families, communities, parishes; to collect money to support the work of missionaries. “Missionaries globalise the Church’s charity which becomes concrete love for the people whose life they share. Like Jesus they go about doing good” we read in the letter issued by the Valencia Missions Delegation. “Missionaries offer themselves and this is radical love!”. The diocese of Valencia has 474 diocesan missionaries.
Saragozza diocese also celebrates the Day on Sunday 30 April recalling its missionaries working in various regions of the world. “Living side by side with people in extreme difficulty our missionaries manifest once again their gratitude to our diocesan Church for accompanying them in their missionary work”. Special Mission Collections are taken in every parish from 28 April to 7 May. The funds collected will go to support various projects: a boarding school for orphan girls in Beira (Mozambique); feeding, primary instruction and evangelisation programmes in Tolgo (Ecuador); providing pastoral and formation material for mission animators in Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire); building of hall for catechesis and formation in Lima (Peru); helping to run a Children’s Home in Kerala (India). (RG) (Agenzia Fides 26/4/2006; righe 37, parole 522)
