missionaries

In its annual report on pastoral workers killed, Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, listed eight priests and five laymen. Six were killed in Africa, five in Central or South America, and two were killed in Europe.

St. Francis Xavier cared for the sick, taught children and catechized the baptized of India, the Indonesian islands and Japan.

The Fellowship of Catholic University Students has grown greatly in the 25 years since launching in 1998. Now most U.S. states have multiple university campuses served by FOCUS missionaries.

Most of the 18 Catholic missionaries murdered in 2022 were not carrying out high-risk missions when they were assassinated but were simply “immersed and submerged in the ordinariness of their lives and their apostolic work,” said the editor of Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news service.

These children’s books are suitable for gift-giving at Christmas.

Helping the staff celebrate the magazine’s 150th anniversary, the pope said Catholic media have a mission to help believers get to know the faith and struggles of their brothers and sisters around the world.

Missionaries are not mercenaries, but beggars who recognize that some brothers and sisters are missing from the community and long to hear the good news of salvation, Pope Francis told the Catholics of Thailand.

In Morocco, where almost everyone is Muslim, Pope Francis said Christians are called to be “a living sacrament of the dialogue that God wants to initiate and with each man and woman.”