World Mission Sunday: Pope, Bishop Neary ask Catholics to support missions with prayer, donations

“When I served as a missionary priest and then bishop in Peru, I saw first-hand how the faith, the prayer and the generosity shown on World Mission Sunday can transform entire communities,” said the Chicago-born pope. As an Augustinian priest, he served in the missions in Peru from 1985 to 1999 and then as apostolic administrator and later bishop of Chiclayo from 2014 to 2023.

In the video message, released Oct. 13, Pope Leo encouraged all Catholics to pray on World Mission Sunday “particularly for missionaries and the fruitfulness of their apostolic labors.”

“Your prayers, your support will help spread the Gospel, provide for pastoral and catechetical programs, help to build new churches, and care for the health and educational needs of our brothers and sisters in mission territories,” the pope said.

According to the Pontifical Mission Societies USA, funds collected on World Mission Sunday support: “82,498 seminarians in formation; 258,540 religious sisters providing care and catechesis; (and) 844,000 catechists sharing the faith at the grassroots.”

The funds also help sustain “12,000 health care centers; 8,750 orphanages and homes for the elderly” and have helped with the construction of 570 new churches, it said.

In the video, Pope Leo asked Catholics to “reflect together on our baptismal call to be ‘missionaries of hope among the peoples,'” and to commit themselves again “to the sweet and joyful task of bringing Christ Jesus our hope to the ends of the earth.”

The annual papal message for World Mission Sunday is released in February. Pope Francis had chosen “Missionaries of Hope Among All Peoples” as the theme for the 2025 celebration.

Locally, collections will take place the weekend of Oct. 18 and 19.

‘Through the work of our local Mission Office/Society for the Propagation of the Faith, the World Mission Sunday celebration and collection connects us with the loving work of missionaries throughout the world as well as encounters taking place here in our own diocese, said Elizabeth M. Brown, director of the St. Cloud Mission Office. “It is the combination of these encounters happening each and every day that mark us as true Christian disciples, true missionary disciples.”

As always, World Mission Sunday funds will go to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, a world-wide Catholic network of mission cooperation, which enables the Gospel of Jesus Christ to reach some of the most marginalized of our brothers and sisters on all ends of the earth.

“As Catholics, this is our opportunity to collectively combine our resources to carry out our baptismal call as missionary disciples,” Brown added. “Your generous contributions will help train lay missionaries, teachers, catechists, deacons, pastors and vowed religious to proclaim their faith and educate others, as well as help build churches and chapels in mission stations and dioceses for people to worship, hear God’s word and receive the sacraments.”

Bishop Patrick Neary joins Brown in inviting invite everyone to “remember that we are all called to support missionary efforts with our prayers, our words, our sacrifices and our actions this World Mission Sunday and always.”