In a country like Papua New Guinea, where roughly 98 percent of the population identify as Christian, with Catholics making up the majority of that number, the work of missionaries is never over.
As the Catholic Church commemorates World Mission Sunday Oct. 20, Divine Word Father Victor Roche, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, said Catholics should not only reflect on the work carried out by priests and men and women religious, but also on their own personal calling to be missionaries in their own country.
“Papua New Guineans can go as missionaries, not only overseas, but they can also go as missionaries from their own place of birth to other parts of the country,” Father Roche told OSV News Oct. 16. “We need laypeople and lay leaders to work in the mission in Papua New Guinea, especially (now) as we are discussing synodality. In a synodal church, laypeople’s role is also very important.”
Father Roche, who hails from India, began serving as a missionary in Papua New Guinea just one year after his ordination in 1980. Noting that his native India was once a “receiving country” that welcomed countless foreign missionaries, the Divine Word priest said it is now “one of the countries that sends the highest number of missionaries overseas.”
“I was very privileged to be one of the first Indians in 1981 to reach Papua New Guinea,” he said. “There were joys and challenges, and I was very happy to be a missionary there, though I was very young and did not have experience in parish work or missionary work. But there were so many other missionaries who were experienced, especially Divine Word missionaries with whom I worked, and they were able to help me and mold me to be a missionary.”
Among the greatest challenges as a missionary, he said, is the amount of pastoral work in the country with a limited number of priests. “The average number of priests in (each of) the dioceses of Papua New Guinea — there are 19 dioceses — would be 25-30. Whereas my home diocese (in India) would have 250 priests! And yet here, there are just 25 or 30.”
Nevertheless, Catholics in the country, especially missionaries, received much needed encouragement in their work from Pope Francis, who visited the country Sept. 6-9.
“His visit was a real blessing for the whole country; not only for the Catholics, but the whole country,” Father Roche told OSV News. “He made a good impression and strengthened the Catholic faith; that they should be faithful, that they should grow, and that they should be missionary in their own country.”
“He boosted me as a missionary,” he added. “He boosted me in my work and he is a strength that was not only given to me, but also to other missionaries.”
The Indian priest also reflected on the timeliness of World Mission Sunday coinciding with the Synod of Bishops on synodality and its call for people to be missionary disciples, noting that “we have not trained our Catholics to be evangelistic.”
“I am afraid to say that in the Catholic Church, we have not formed our Catholics to be missionaries,” Father Roche told OSV News. “They are very happy to be (in church) on Sundays; maybe some will go for daily Mass, and some may have rosaries or other devotions. Full stop. That’s it. But they won’t evangelize. They won’t go out to other communities.”
Father Roche said it was “high time that we teach them to be missionary: missionary with other families, with communities, in their parishes and in other parishes in the dioceses.”
“I am very happy that synodality and, especially the synod, stresses that aspect: that every Catholic should be missionary,” he said.
For this reason, Father Roche said he hoped World Mission Sunday will be an opportunity for all Catholics to pray “that the church may be missionary,” as well as to pray so that laypeople may take “their rightful places as missionaries,” especially women.
“I would say about 60-70 percent of our churches are filled with women. So, we have to stress, especially during World Mission Sunday, that the role of women in the Catholic Church should be recognized,” he said.
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