EUROPE/SPAIN - Missionary Childhood Day: “Your life, a mission”

Sunday, 18 January 2026 pontifical mission societies missionary childhood youth mission missionaries

SPAIN

2026-01-18
Missionary Childhood Day: “Your life, a mission”

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Madrid (Agenzia Fides) – In 2025, over 700,000 children benefited from donations collected by the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) in Spain for 473 projects in 36 countries. On Sunday, January 18, the Spanish children and young people of the Pontifical Mission Societies will be the protagonists of Missionary Childhood Day, under the theme “Your life, a mission.”

Missionary Childhood Day of Children is celebrated annually on the day of the Epiphany, but the date varies from country to country.

The website of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Spain (https://infanciamisionera.es/) offers accompanying materials for families, schools, and parishes, as well as a video for young children in which a child finds inspiration with his uncle, a missionary. Among the suggested initiatives is a nationwide drawing competition, which closes on February 6.

The stated desire and hope is that missionary children and young people, through their prayers and generosity, can participate in proclaiming the Gospel and helping children around the world through awareness-raising activities.

One of the projects supported by the Spanish Pontifical Mission Societies is the Dakhla Center for the Disabled (Western Sahara), which was visited by Telmo Aldaz de la Quadra-Salcedo, a well-known Spanish travel journalist and television documentary filmmaker who regularly collaborates with missionaries on the numerous expeditions he organizes around the world.
At the invitation of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Spain, Telmo Aldaz de la Quadra-Salcedo traveled to the Sahara, where disability is often seen as a misfortune, and shared his experiences at the press conference for the launch of Missionary Childhood Day. "I saw with my own eyes how more than eighty children and their families are being helped; without this support, their reality would be very different," he explained. At the Dakhla Center for the Disabled, the only one of its kind in the region, Telmo was received by Father Mario León Dorado, a missionary of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) and Apostolic Prefect of Western Sahara. In a video available on the Missionary Childhood website, Father Dorado explained: “Thanks to Missionary Childhood, we are helping to find well-trained staff—a speech therapist and a physiotherapist—so that these children can see that there really is a glimmer of hope. For them and their families, it is good news to know that they are not forgotten by God, but that children in other places are thinking of them, helping them, praying for them, and carrying out awareness campaigns.”

Father José María Calderón, National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Spain, summarized: “We want to make the children aware that they, too, are missionaries, not only in their own communities, but also through their cooperation and support for the missionaries.” (EG) (Agenzia Fides, 18/1/2026)