After reciting the Angelus, Pope Francis recalled the 96th World Mission Day, which took place that day. Don Pizzoli explained to this newspaper that the way of preaching has changed, but the desire of the Church to evangelize the peoples remains the same.
(Vatican news network) The universal Church celebrated World Mission Day on Sunday 23 October, “an important occasion for all the baptized to arouse the desire to participate in the universal mission of the Church through witness and proclamation of the Gospel”. After reciting the Angelus that day, Pope Francis recalled Christians with these words, encouraging them to support the missionaries with prayer and concrete care, helping them to continue their work of evangelization in the world.
The theme of this year’s World Mission Sunday is: “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1,8). In a statement to this effect, the Pope wrote: “Since Christ was sent first as the Father’s ambassador, he is therefore a ‘faithful witness’. Every Christian is therefore called to be an ambassador and witness of Christ. People. The Church, as a body of Christ’s disciples, has no other mission than that of evangelizing the world and bearing witness for Christ. The identity of the Church is to preach the Gospel “(n. 1).
Father Giuseppe Pizzoli, director of the Italian Mission Foundation, explained to this information network the changes that have taken place in the mission of the Church. He said that since the Second Vatican Council mission has been considered the soul of the Church and is no longer a European mission, that is, not only missionaries from Europe to the world, but also by Latin Missionaries who left the Americas to Africa, or from ‘Africa to Asia, they gave the missionary a universal air.
Don Pizzoli stressed that the Church is often accused of being colonial, arguing that only European culture is suitable for evangelization. Today the Church recognizes that the message of Jesus can also manifest itself in different cultures because “The Holy Spirit precedes us, and when we missionaries arrive in a place and speak of Jesus Christ for the first time, we discover the spirit of the Gospel has come before us. to us”. In fact, the Second Vatican Council recognized that in every culture there are seeds of the Holy Word.
Does Europe also need to welcome the preaching of the Gospel? In this regard, Fr Pizzoli said: “We have developed the idea that Europe does not need missionaries, but only catechesis”. However, things have changed and the Church has understood over time that you have a missionary character and that the missionary spirit must be inscribed in your whole life and in her actions. Everything must be a proclamation of Jesus Christ.
Referring to the theme of this year’s World Mission Day “You will be my witnesses”, Fr Pizzoli believes that this vocation involves the daily life of all Christians and that every Christian should be reflected in his real life and in his environment. “We are all called to be witnesses of Jesus, but Jesus also said ‘to the ends of the earth’: in this universal breath some have a special vocation to be sent by their groups, by their churches, to carry the Gospel to the end of the Earth “.
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