The Sunday October 21 We will celebrate with joy the Anniversary of the Canonization of Santa Carmen Sallés, coinciding with the JoWorld Missions.
Double reason for celebration and hope!

Pope's message for the World Missions Day
"Together with young people, we take the gospel to all"
January 26, 2022

Dear young people, I want to reflect with you about the mission that Jesus has entrusted to us. Directed to you I also do it to all the Christians who live in the Church the adventure of their existence as children of God. What drives me to speak to all, talking with you, is the certainty that the Christian faith always remains young when it opens to the mission that Christ entrusts us. "The mission reinforces faith," wrote San Juan Paul II (LETTER ENC. REDEMPTORIS MISSIO, 2), a Pope who loved young people so much and dedicated himself a lot to them.

The synod that we will celebrate in Rome next October, missionary month, offers us the opportunity to better understand, in the light of faith, what the Lord Jesus means to young people and, through you, to the Christian communities.

January 26, 2022

Life is a mission

Each man and woman is a mission, and this is the reason he is living on earth. Being attracted and being sent are the two movements that our heart, especially when you are young in age, feels as interior forces of love that promise a future and drive our existence forward. No one better than young people perceives how life surprises and attracts. Living with joy one's own responsibility is a great challenge. I know the lights and shadows of being young, and if I think of my youth and my family, I remember how intense the hope was in the better future. The fact that we are in this world without a previous decision makes us intuit that there is an initiative that precedes us and calls us to existence. Each of us is called to reflect on this reality: "I am a mission on this earth, and for that I am in this world" (Exhort. Ap. Evangelii Gaudium, 273).

January 26, 2022

We announce them to Jesucisto
The Church, announcing what it has received for free (cf. Mt 10.8; Acts 3,6), shares with you, young people, the way and the truth that lead to the meaning of existence in this earth. Jesus Christ, dead and risen by us, offers our freedom and moves it to seek, discover and announce this full and true sense. Dear young people, do not be afraid of Christ and his Church. In them is the treasure that fills life with joy. I tell you from experience: thanks to faith I have found the foundation of my desires and the strength to realize them. I have seen a lot of suffering, a lot of poverty, disfigure the face of so many brothers and sisters. However, for those who are with Jesus, evil is a stimulus to love more and more. For the love of the Gospel, many men and women, and many young people, have generously surrendered themselves, sometimes to martyrdom, to the service of the brothers. From the cross of Jesus we learn the divine logic of the offer of ourselves (cf. 1 CO 1.17-25), as an announcement of the Gospel for the life of the world (cf. Jn 3,16). Being inflamed by the love of Christ consumes who burns and grows, illuminates and vivifies whoever loves himself (cf. 2 co 5,14). Following the example of the saints, who discover the broad horizons of God, I invite you to ask you at all times: "What would Christ do in my place?"

January 26, 2022

Transmit faith to the confines of the earth
Also you, young, by baptism you are living members of the Church, and together we have the mission of bringing everyone the Gospel. You are opening to life. Growing up in the grace of faith, which is transmitted to us in the sacraments of the Church, immerses us in a current of multitude of witnesses, where the wisdom of the one who has experience becomes testimony and encouragement for those who open to the future. And the novelty of young people becomes, in turn, in support and hope for those who are close to the goal of their path. In the coexistence between men of different ages, the mission of the Church builds inter-generational bridges, in which faith in God and the love of neighbor constitute factors of deep union.

This transmission of faith, the heart of the mission of the Church, is carried out by the "contagion" of love, in which joy and enthusiasm express the discovery of the meaning and fullness of life. The spread of faith by attraction demands open hearts, dilated by love. You cannot put limits to love: strong as death is love (cf. Ct 8,6). And that expansion creates the encounter, the testimony, the announcement; It produces participation in charity with all those who are far from faith and are indifferent to it, sometimes opposite and opposites. Human, cultural and religious environments still oblivious to the Gospel of Jesus and the sacramental presence of the Church represent the extreme peripheries, "the confines of the earth", where their missionary disciples are sent, from the Easter of Jesus, with the certainty of always having their lord with them (cf. Mt 28,20; Acts 1,8). This consists of what we call Missio ad people. The most desolate periphery of humanity in need of Christ is indifference towards faith or even hate against the divine fullness of life. Any material and spiritual poverty, any discrimination of brothers and sisters is always a consequence of the rejection of God and his love.

The confines of the earth, dear young people, are for you today very relative and always easily "navigable." The digital world, social networks that invade and transfer us, blur borders, erase limits and distances, reduce differences. It seems everything at your fingertips, everything so close and immediate. However, without the committed gift of our lives, we can have thousands of contacts but we will never be immersed in a true communion of life. The mission to the confines of the Earth demands the gift of itself in the vocation given to us who has put us on this land (cf. Lc9,23-25). I would dare to say that, for a young man who wants to follow Christ, the essential is the search and adherence to the vocation itself.

January 26, 2022

Testimonize love
I thank all the ecclesial realities that allow you to personally find Christ living in his church: parishes, associations, movements, religious communities, the different expressions of missionary service. Many young people find in missionary volunteering a way to serve the "smallest" (cf. Mt 25,40), promoting human dignity and testifying the joy of loving and being Christians. These ecclesial experiences make each other's training not only a preparation for their own professional success, but the development and care of a gift from the Lord to better serve others. These laudable forms of temporary missionary service are a fruitful beginning and, in vocational discernment, they can help you decide the total gift of yourself as missionaries.

The pontifical mission works were born from young hearts, with the purpose of encouraging the announcement of the Gospel to all people, contributing to the cultural and human growth of so many people really thirsty. Prayer and material aid, which are generously given and distributed by the OMP, serve the Holy See to ensure that those who receive them for their own need can, in turn, be able to testify in their environment. No one is so poor that he can't give what he has, and before even what he is. I like to repeat the exhortation that I directed to Chilean young people: «Never think that you have nothing to contribute or that you do not need anyone: you need a lot of people and this think about it. Each of you think about it in their hearts: I miss a lot of people ”(I find the young people, Sanctuary of Maipú, January 17, 2018).

Dear young people: next October missionary, in which the synod that is dedicated to you will take place, it will be a new opportunity to make missionary disciples, increasingly passionate about Jesus and his mission, to the confines of the earth. To Mary, Queen of the Apostles, to the saints Francisco Javier and Teresa of the Child Jesus, to the Blessed Pablo Manna, I ask them to intercede for all of us and always accompany us.

January 26, 2022

I entrust all the sick and their families to the intercession of Mary
Vatican, May 20, 2018,
Solemnity of Pentecost