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Dear Friends,

I have been praying that 2022 will be the year that people from all around the world have their lives return to normal. This recent pandemic has gripped the entire globe and has held people, churches, communities, and employers as hostages. The good news is that we have learned to come together to help save lives and to make extraordinary sacrifices to keep family members, friends, and neighbours safe and healthy.

Despite nearly three years of listening to world news focusing on the pandemic, there are other good news stories. I recently read that, in 2019, the world’s population was approximately 7.580 billion and in 2002, it was approximately 6.220 billion. During this period of 17 years, the number of identified Catholics increased from 1.070 billion to approximately 1.344 billion.

I am very pleased to learn that Catholics are dramatically increasing worldwide. This demonstrates that the relentless work of missionary Priests, Religious Sisters, and Brothers, of spreading the gospel of Christ, is reaching millions of people throughout the world.

We must continue to provide our steadfast support for missionaries working in challenging regions and making sacrifices. This shows that one’s Faith and determination can make a difference.

“It was also Peter who, after Pentecost, risked his life to do the Lord’s work, speaking boldly of his faith in Jesus”.

Like St. Peter the Apostle, these faithful and dedicated missionary Priests, Religious Sisters, and Brothers, have been serving the Lord and providing tremendous leadership and commitment that has resulted in this amazing growth in the number of Catholics worldwide. The Holy Father’s mission of evangelization and spreading the gospel of Jesus is being truly accomplished.

Supporting seminaries demonstrates your Faith!

Investing in seminaries must continue in different parts of the world. As the number of people congregate and come together to learn about Christ, the need to build new churches and train more priests and religious follow. As Christians, we must continue to grow and evangelize all around the world…this is very positive news!

St. Augustine’s Millennium Seminary is in Tamale, Ghana. The number of priests graduating from this seminary grows every year, but unfortunately, there is no regular running water. As a result, seminarians make countless trips to fetch water from streams, and this daily routine has been going on for years. The seminary is, therefore, seeking financial help to drill water boreholes.

Fortunately, heavy-duty equipment to drill boreholes in northern Ghana has become more accessible.

Missionaries do not have much and live simple lives, let’s help them have access to fresh water.

Drilling a borehole will provide fresh water to the seminary and also benefit the local villagers. It is an important project that needs your support. Fresh water is the lifeblood in any community. Please donate generously through St. Peter the Apostle Society to provide clean water to St. Augustine’s Millennium Seminary. Thank you, may the good Lord bless and keep you.

Yours in the service of Christ,
Rev. Fr. Alex Osei, C.S.Sp.
National Director

Pontifical Mission Societies

2022 PMS ANNIVERSARIES AT A GLANCE

400 Years of Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (CEP)

The Congregation of the Evangelization of Peoples celebrates the fourth centenary of its foundation. Since 1622, the Church’s missionary work had been organized and coordinated at the world level by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in collaboration with many religious orders and congregations and with the local Churches. At the Vatican Council, the role of the Congregation was affirmed, and it was renamed the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

200 Years of the Society for the Propagation of Faith

On May 3, 2022, the Pontifical Mission Society for the Propagation of Faith (POPF) will celebrate two major milestones. It will mark the 200^th anniversary of its foundation as the Association of the Propagation of Faith and the 100^th anniversary of its Pontifical status, conferred by Pope Pius XI in his Motu Proprio Romanorum Pontificum, thus confirming the missionary spirit of the Society and its important service to the universal Church. By the same Motu Proprio, the Holy Father also conferred Pontifical to the Society of the Holy Childhood and the Society of St. Peter the Apostle.

Our foundress, Pauline Jaricot will be beatified on May 22, 2022, in Lyon, France

100 Years of Pontifical Statues Propagation of Faith (POF), Holy Childhood Association (HCA), and St. Peter the Apostle (SPA)

The Pontifical Mission Society for the Propagation of Faith, the Pontifical Mission Society of Holy Childhood, and the Pontifical Mission Society of St. Peter the Apostle were made Pontifical in 1922. These Societies were made Pontifical by Pope Pius XI at the centenary celebration of the Society for the Propagation of Faith.

150^th Birthday of Father Paolo Manna, founder of PMU

Rev. Fr. Paolo Manna (16 January 1872 – 15 September 1952) was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions as well as the founder of the Pontifical Missionary Union of Priests and Religious. He was passionate about promoting the missions, evangelic, and Apostolic life.

He was Beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001.

Click here to download the entire Novena for Pauline Marie Jaricot

Jeanne Bigard and her mother, Stephanie, had suffered from personal tragedies – the father had committed suicide and her brother was accidentally burnt to death. Both became virtual recluses, living almost as hermits. They turned to good works and became interested in making altar linen and vestments for missionaries in Japan.

Made aware of their interest, Fr. Villion, who was stationed in Japan, approached them in 1888. From Kyoto in Japan, he asked them for assistance in building a church. Although very wealthy, they were also very careful with money. Ultimately, they sold some land and a factory and gave 50,000 francs which enabled Fr. Villion to build his church.

In 1889, a French Bishop of Nagasaki, Jules-Alphonse Cousin, suggested to the Bigards that they might consider supporting boys in Japan to train for the Priesthood. Thus, was born the idea of a general society to promote indigenous clergy throughout the world. The Bigards donated to the new society the whole of their considerable fortune. Approved by the Pope in 1890, it too became a Pontifical Mission Society in 1922.

The Society of St. Peter the Apostle trains young men and women in their own country and culture to serve their people as religious Sisters, Brothers, or Priests. Also assisted are in their formation and training are those catechists who have been chosen to be the teachers and mentors of the catechists in their country.

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – “The Holy Father in the Message for World Mission Day of 2021, taken from the Acts of the Apostles, brings together the mission and the human experience of the mercy of Christ: he wants to tell us that there is no dichotomy nor separation between what we call spirituality and the work of the apostolate”: This is what Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, said in an interview with Agenzia Fides, commenting on the Message for Missionary World Day 2021, published today by the Holy See, entitled “We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). “Spirituality – explains the Cardinal – means having a profound experience in one’s life of the merciful love of God, given to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, with his love for us, became one of us, our brother, the one who embraced our frailties, our labors and our dreams, our joys and hopes, as said in Gaudium et Spes. And, as Pope Francis recalls, when a person is loved, when he experiences being loved, as happened with the apostles, he cannot keep it for himself, but wants to share it: it is a beautiful and precious fact and thus becomes mission”.
The Prefect continues: “The mission is therefore intimately linked to the love of Christ. It is not a job, it is not a human work, sometimes even felt as a heavy task, like a burden, but it springs from gratitude. It is a response of gratitude for the love received from God.
Embraced and enveloped by the love of God, we want to share this love especially with those who do not feel loved, who feel abandoned, rejected, with those who live in the existential peripheries. We who have experienced God’s love, we who have listened and welcomed the Gospel of love, share it with our neighbor, with hearts overflowing with gratitude”.
Another aspect that Pope Francis touches on in the Message is that of compassion: “Compassion – remarks Cardinal Tagle – is one of the ways to show the wounded humanity today, in the difficult times we live in, the face of God’s love.
To proclaim the Gospel today, the language understood by humanity is that of charity and compassion: it is one of the aspects for sharing God’s love. Many people in the world were already fragile, marginalized, vulnerable before the pandemic. Today their situation has worsened: for this reason communicating, with our life, the presence and compassion of Christ will bring them consolation and new hope. The Pope calls us in the Message to be ‘missionaries of hope’, in a world that is so much in need of kindness, hospitality, mercy, fraternity. The mission is to carry out every action of life with the spirit of the Eucharist, it is to live a life of gratitude and thanksgiving to God. It is to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the greatest gift we have received, and that gift bears fruit: we ourselves are the fruit of his Spirit and of his presence, we are those who bring the priceless gift of his love to the world”.
Finally, the Prefect of Propaganda Fide wants to remember, in his conversation with Fides, the value of the missio ad gentes and of those who give their lives to carry it out: “Missionaries are those people who, to share the love of God, leave their security, the comfort of their life and go to the peripheries of the world, among the poorest and most disadvantaged people, among the suffering and the needy, witnessing with their life that God is love, and that he loves and gives himself to every creature. Missionaries are those who, like the apostles, cannot keep for themselves the love they have experienced: the Spirit pushes them to the ends of the earth to announce it and give it to those who need it most, to those who suffer and are desperate, to those who do not know him and have not experienced the immense love of Christ. Today, while the whole world is going through very difficult challenges such as that of the pandemic, Christ’s mission continues through each of us: where the mostneedy are, there are also missionaries, ready to console wounded hearts, in the name of Christ Jesus”. (PA) (Agenzia Fides)
 
 
 

On May 26, 2020. Pope Francis received in the audience the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, and authorized the same Congregation to enact Decrees concerning the recognition of miracles, martyrdom, and heroic virtues.

On Wednesday, May 27, 2020, Archbishop Giampietro Dal Toso, President of the Pontifical Mission Societies, sent a statement announcing the recognition of the miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God Pauline Marie Jaricot, founder of the works of Propagation of the Faith.

Even though we do not yet have a date for a possible Beatification, all of us, Pontifical Mission Societies, are happy, because in this way we also recognize the charism of prayer and charity that has guided all our activity. Pauline Marie Jaricot was born on July 22, 1799, in Lyon and died on January 9, 1862.

She marks the beginning of that great missionary cooperation movement which was to gradually involve the whole Church. Passionate for the spread of the kingdom of God, she was firmly convinced that missionary work did not derive its effectiveness from human resources, but exclusively from God. In 1826, she founded the movement of the Living Rosary. She was declared Venerable by Pope John XXIII on February 25, 1963.