World Mission Week 2025

By Rev. Fr. Zéphirin Moubé

1. World Mission Week in brief

The entire month of October is dedicated to mission, culminating in World Mission Week, which ends on Mission Sunday. This year, the week runs from Sunday 12 October to Sunday 19 October 2025.

Pope Leo XIV has chosen the theme ‘Missionaries of Hope Among the Peoples’ for this week. Through this theme, he invites us to pray for and support the mission of the universal Church and local churches. Indeed, World Mission Week calls on all Catholics to pray and share in order to support the life and mission of local churches around the world. To this end, a collection is organised on Mission Sunday. It was established by Pope Pius XI in 1926 and is devoted to the Pontifical Mission Societies.

2. History of Mission Week

World Mission Week has existed since 1926. It was established by Pope Pius XI. Blessed Pauline Jaricot (1799-1862) was its inspiration. At the age of 17, she turned her back on her worldly life and joined forces with young female workers in her father’s factories to collaborate in spreading the Gospel through prayer and missionary work.

After three years, realising the material needs in the so-called mission countries, the young Pauline invented an ingenious system of collecting funds for the mission. A collection to spread the Gospel through missionary activity. The practice spread throughout Europe and inspired the commitment of thousands of people.

Pauline Jaricot’s financial and spiritual chain officially became the Association for the Propagation of the Faith on 3 May 1822. The rapid growth of this organisation throughout Europe finally attracted the attention of the Holy See, which asked to welcome it. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, along with two others (the Missionary Childhood Association founded by Charles de Forbin in 1843 in Paris and the Society of St. Peter the Apostle founded in 1889 by the Bigard sisters in Caen), which were established later, became pontifical on 3 May 1922. The Pontifical Missionary Union, founded in Italy by Father Paolo Manna in 1916, was declared pontifical in 1956. These various works are grouped under the name Pontifical Missionary Works, whose common and principal objective is to “promote the universal missionary spirit among the people of God ” (Redemtoris Missio n. 84).

To achieve this, the above-mentioned works, as bodies of the Holy See, provide information on the life and needs of the universal mission, encourage the Churches to pray for one another, and work to promote mutual exchange, communion and sharing. They have the primary task of promoting cooperation to harmonise missionary forces and ensure the equitable distribution of resources for the mission, with particular attention to the most needy countries.

World Mission Week is celebrated with fervour in dioceses and parishes around the world, and all the faithful of Christ are invited to evaluate their missionary commitment on this occasion. So what can we say about the Church, the Family of God, in Africa?

3. Missionaries of hope among the peoples. The mission of SCEAM

Pope Leo XIV has chosen to place this 99th World Mission Week under the theme ‘Missionaries of hope among the peoples’. This motto proposed by the Pope in this jubilee year ‘reminds every Christian and the Church, the community of the baptised, of their fundamental vocation to be, in the footsteps of Christ, messengers and builders of hope’ (Leo XIV). May every baptised person, disciple and missionary of Christ, make hope shine around them and in every place! This is the wish expressed by Pope Leo XIV in his message.

It should be remembered that 1969 was a special year for the Church in Africa and its islands in terms of intracontinental mission. Indeed, a few years after the close of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the African continent had the privilege of welcoming for the first time a visit by a Supreme Pontiff, Pope Paul VI, to Kampala, Uganda. In his address to the peoples of Africa, he uttered these prophetic and engaging words: ‘You Africans have become your own missionaries. You can and must have an African Christianity.’

This visit marked the official launch of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), which is the driving force behind evangelisation in Africa and its islands. May our prayers during this Mission Week strengthen the dynamism of this structure of communion and consultation, for a synergy that fulfils its mission and, in turn, the very mission of the Church, the family of God, which is in Africa!

4. Highlights of the Message for this 99th World Mission Week signed by Pope Francis

a) In the footsteps of Christ, our hope

• As we celebrate the first ordinary Jubilee of the Third Millennium, after that of the year 2000, we keep our eyes fixed on Christ, who is at the centre of history, ‘the same yesterday, today and forever’ (Heb 13:8). In the synagogue of Nazareth, he declared the fulfilment of Scripture in the ‘today’ of his historical presence. He thus revealed himself as the One sent by the Father, with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, to bring the Good News of the Kingdom of God and to inaugurate ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’ for all humanity (cf. Lk 4:16-21).
• In this mystical ‘today’ that lasts until the end of the world, Christ is the fulfilment of salvation for all, especially for those whose only hope is God. In his earthly life, he ‘went about doing good and healing all’ from evil and the Evil One (cf. Acts 10:38), restoring hope in God to the needy and to the people.
• Moreover, he experienced all human frailties, except sin, even going through critical moments that could have led to despair, as in his agony in Gethsemane and on the cross. He thus became the divine Missionary of hope, the supreme model for those who, throughout the centuries, carry forward the mission received from God, even in extreme trials.
• Through his disciples, sent to all peoples and mystically accompanied by him, the Lord Jesus continues his ministry of hope for humanity. He still bends over every poor, afflicted, desperate and evil-ridden person, to pour “the oil of consolation and the wine of hope upon their wounds ‘ (Preface ’Jesus the Good Samaritan”).
• Obeying her Lord and Master and with the same spirit of service, the Church, the community of Christ’s missionary disciples, continues this mission, offering her life for all among the peoples. While having to face, on the one hand, persecutions, tribulations and difficulties and, on the other hand, its own imperfections and failures due to the weaknesses of each of its members, it is constantly driven by the love of Christ to move forward united with Him on this missionary path and to take on, like Him and with Him, the cry of humanity, and even the groaning of every creature awaiting final redemption.
• Let us therefore feel inspired to set out in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus to become, with Him and in Him, signs and messengers of hope for all, in every place and in every circumstance that God gives us to live. May all the baptised, missionary disciples of Christ, make his hope shine in every corner of the earth!

b) Christians, bearers and builders of hope among peoples

• In following Christ the Lord, Christians are called to transmit the Good News by sharing the concrete living conditions of those they encounter and thus becoming bearers and builders of hope. Indeed, ‘the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, are also the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Nothing genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts’ (Gaudium et spes, n. 1).
• The horizon of this hope goes beyond the passing realities of this world and opens up to the divine realities that we already foresee in the present. Indeed, as Saint Paul VI reminded us, the salvation in Christ that the Church offers to all as a gift of God’s mercy is not only “immanent, commensurate with material or even spiritual needs […] identifying itself totally with desires, hopes, affairs and struggles, but a salvation that overflows all these limits to be fulfilled in communion with the one Absolute, that of God: a transcendent, eschatological salvation, which certainly has its beginning in this life, but which is fulfilled in eternity” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi, n. 27).

c) Renewing the mission of hope

• Faced with the urgency of the mission of hope today, Christ’s disciples are called first and foremost to train themselves to become ‘artisans’ of hope and restorers of a humanity that is often distracted and unhappy.
• Missionaries of hope are men and women of prayer, because ‘the person who hopes is a person who prays,’ as the venerable Cardinal Van Thuan emphasised. He kept hope alive during his long tribulation in prison thanks to the strength he received from his persevering prayer and the Eucharist (cf. F.X. Nguyen Van Thuan, The Way of Hope, Rome 2001, n. 963).
• Let us not forget that prayer is the first missionary action and at the same time ‘the first force of hope’ (Catechesis, 20 May 2020).
• Finally, evangelisation is always a communal process, like the character of Christian hope (cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, n. 14). This process does not end with the first proclamation or with baptism, but continues with the building of Christian communities through the accompaniment of each baptised person on the path of the Gospel.
• I emphasise once again this missionary synodality of the Church, as well as the service of the Pontifical Mission Societies in promoting the missionary responsibility of the baptised and supporting new particular Churches. And I urge all of you, children, young people, adults, elderly people, to participate actively in the common mission of evangelisation through the witness of your lives and through prayer, through your sacrifices and your generosity. Thank you very much for all this!
• Dear sisters and brothers, let us turn to Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, our hope. Let us entrust to her this wish for the Jubilee and for the years to come: ‘May the light of Christian hope reach everyone as a message of God’s love addressed to all! May the Church be a faithful witness to this proclamation in every part of the world!’ (Bull Spes non confundit, n. 6).

Accra (Ghana), 15 October 2025

Rev. Fr. Zéphirin Moubé

First Deputy Secretary General of SECAM

Head of the Evangelisation Commission