Rome (Italy). On 1 October 2025, in the memory of Saint Theresa of Lisieux, patron saint of the missions, the missionary month opens, dedicated to animation in favor of the missions and to strengthening universal missionary passion in the hearts of all Christians and with prayer for the missionaries of the world.
Missionaries of hope among the people is the theme chosen by Pope Francis for the Message – published on 25 January 2025, Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle – which accompanies the 99th World Mission Day, which is celebrated on 19 October. “ It reminds individual Christians and the entire Church, the community of the baptized, of our fundamental vocation to be, in the footsteps of Christ, messengers and builders of hope,” was the motivation of the late Pope.
The Jubilee Year gives the missionary world the opportunity to meet in Rome on 4 – 5 October to celebrate the Jubilee of the Missionary World, an event to which all lay and religious missionaries, pastoral workers on mission, fidei donum, and various missionary organizations are particularly invited. The main moments will be: Saturday, 4 October, the Audience with Pope Leo XIV, the pilgrimage to the Holy Door in St. Peter’s, the International Missionary Conference in the Aula Magna of the Pontifical Urbaniana University, “La Missio ad gentes today towards new Horizons”. On Sunday, the 5th, there will be the Holy Mass celebrated by the Holy Father in St. Peter’s Square and the Feast of the Peoples in the Gardens of Castel Sant’Angelo.
Prayer supports and accompanies all the charitable activities, solidarity and missionary testimonies that distinguish this month from a pastoral point of view. “The first commitment will be prayer for us and for our communities,” underlines Fr. Giuseppe Pizzoli, General Director of the Missio Foundation, recalling the words of the Holy Father, “Let’s not forget that praying is the first missionary action and, at the same time, ‘the first strength of hope’.”
In fact, Pope Francis has often renewed the invitation to value the universal character of solidarity, insisting “on the service of the Pontifical Mission Societies in promoting the missionary responsibility of the baptized and supporting the new local Churches”.
In this regard, the Missio Foundation, the Pastoral Body of the Italian Episcopal Conference which supports and promotes the missionary dimension in ecclesial communities, has prepared various materials and videos for missionary animation.
This year then, for the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and for the entire Salesian Family, the missionary month acquires an even more relevant meaning, thanks to the Canonization of Sister Maria Troncatti, FMA missionary for 40 years in Ecuador, which will take place precisely on October 19, on World Mission Day, in St. Peter’s Square.
The Superior General of the FMA Institute, Mother Chiara Cazzuola, in Circular n°1046 – A holiness that generates life with a missionary heart – speaks of the missionary dimension as an essential element of the identity of the Institute (cf. C 75): “It is starting from our Baptism, as Pope Francis reminds us, “I am a mission on this earth, and for this reason I find myself in this world” (Evangelii gaudium, 273).
And again, of an “evangelical, but also human dynamic of the mission: life grows and matures to the extent that we give it for the lives of others. From here comes the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.”
It is the same dynamic that animates Sister Maria Troncatti, passionate about the Salesian mission, who “contagions people and her own Sisters by radiating her great love to youth, so that they may be happy in time and eternity. Her daring and the courage of her faith also fuel in young people the commitment to be ‘true missionaries’. We can rightly say that the community where Sister Maria works is a true ‘outgoing’ community, which lives the mission in a synodal way!”
Further materials useful for missionary animation and preparation for the great event of the Canonization are available on the official website www.mariatroncatti.org
