Twenty years ago, I met Bishop George Pallipparambil (aka PK George), the founding bishop of Miao diocese, a new mission church located in the remote foothills of the Himalayan Mountains in northeastern India. It is one of the 1,100 mission dioceses in 100 countries that we support each year on World Mission Sunday.
As we prepare to celebrate World Mission Sunday on Oct. 20, we are reminded of the global mission of the Church and the important role we play in supporting those who bring the Gospel to the farthest reaches of the world. This mission resonates deeply with our Archdiocesan Synod’s call to be witnesses of Christ and to build communities that serve evangelization, as outlined in my pastoral letter, “You Will Be My Witnesses: Gathered and Sent From the Upper Room.”
In early 2013, Karenni priest Father Saw Joseph Kureh was 46 and running a parish in the Loikaw diocese in the in Myanmar when his bishop suddenly asked him to go to the United States.
When considering the Catholic belief of the Eucharist as a sacred mystery, many Muslims could find common ground within their own faith, said Bob Brenneman, a professor and former evangelical pastor who spent 15 years sharing the Gospel with Muslims in the Middle East before becoming Catholic.
When Bishop George Pallipparambil was a Salesian seminarian in northeastern India more than 40 years ago, he started seeing increasing numbers of Indigenous teens in the streets of Lusukia, Assam, where he was teaching at his religious community’s Don Bosco Bible School.
Anne Attea’s two and a half years of volunteer service in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, occurred from 1988 to 1990, a time of upheaval in that country.
Having come to know Jesus through the Scriptures and in the Eucharist, Catholics are called to share with others the hope and joy that come from faith and that endure even when life gets difficult, Pope Francis said.
After separate missionary trips to Alaska, India, Jamaica and Kenya, four witnesses of Christ in others and of his love in their own lives share some of their experiences of the universal Church with The Catholic Spirit this World Mission Sunday.
