Missionary discipleship contributes to peacemaking, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Recognizing themselves as members of the one body of Christ, all Catholics should sense an urgency to share the Gospel message of God’s love with others and to welcome them as brothers and sisters, Pope Leo XIV said.

“Our world, wounded by war, violence and injustice, needs to hear the Gospel message of God’s love and to experience the reconciling power of Christ’s grace,” the pope said May 22 as he met more than 120 national directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies.

Working in coordination with the Dicastery for Evangelization, the societies are: the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, the Society of St. Peter Apostle, the Holy Childhood Association and the Missionary Union of Priests and Religious.

The societies raise awareness about the foreign missions, educate Catholics of all ages about their responsibility to be missionary disciples and raise money to support the missions and missionaries.

The work of the societies “is indispensable to the church’s mission of evangelization, as I can personally attest from my own pastoral experience in the years of my ministry serving in Peru,” said the pope, who spent more than two decades in Peru as a missionary and a bishop.

Raising missionary awareness among all Catholics and helping them take responsibility for sharing the Gospel “remains an essential aspect of the church’s renewal as envisioned by the Second Vatican Council,” the pope said, and it is “all the more urgent in our own day.”

“We are to bring to all peoples, indeed to all creatures, the Gospel promise of true and lasting peace, which is possible because, in the words of Pope Francis, the Lord has overcome the world and its constant conflict ‘by making peace through the blood of his cross,'” he said.

Recognizing “our communion as members of the body of Christ naturally opens us to the universal dimension of the church’s mission of evangelization,” he said, and it should inspire Catholics “to transcend the confines of our individual parishes, dioceses and nations, in order to share with every nation and people the surpassing richness of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.”

Pope Leo asked the national directors “to give priority to visiting dioceses, parishes and communities, and in this way to help the faithful to recognize the fundamental importance of the missions and supporting our brothers and sisters in those areas of our world where the church is young and growing.”

And he asked them to focus on cultivating and promoting “the vision of the church as the communion of believers, enlivened by the Holy Spirit, who enables us to enter into the perfect communion and harmony of the blessed Trinity.”

“Indeed, it is in the Trinity that all things find their unity,” the pope told them.

“This dimension of our Christian life and mission is close to my heart and is reflected in the words of St. Augustine that I chose for my episcopal service and now for my papal ministry: ‘In Illo uno unum’ (‘In the One (Christ), we are one’),” the pope said.

“Christ is our savior and in him we are one, a family of God, beyond the rich variety of our languages, cultures and experiences,” Pope Leo said.