October 10, 2019 • 1B Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis
BAPTIZED AND
sent COURTESY MARIA MONTELLO
Maria Montello, a Maryknoll missionary in Cambodia, helps Navy (Nah-vee), a blind student in her class at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, read a timeline history of Southeast Asia in braille in this 2013 photo. Pieces of incense sticks and toothpicks prepared by Montello mark the years, decades and centuries. Read more inside about Montello’s missionary work and the service of a missionary in West Africa — two missionaries with ties to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis who are currently receiving financial assistance from the Center for Mission in the archdiocese. Their stories and more are highlighted in this special section marking World Mission Sunday, which Pope Francis is stressing as a time to remember that by virtue of baptism, all Catholics are called to be missionaries.
W
What is World Mission Sunday? orld Mission Sunday is a day set
Catholic mission, it is a time for Catholics to
during an Extraordinary Missionary Month,
aside for the Catholic Church
renew their own missionary spirit and to offer
called by Pope Francis to mark the 100th
throughout the world to publicly
prayer and financial support for the young
anniversary of Pope Benedict XV’s apostolic
renew its commitment to be a missionary
and developing mission churches in 120
letter “Maximum Illud,” which emphasizes
Church.
countries around the world. The event is
the missionary call to proclaim the Gospel.
It is celebrated on the next to last Sunday in
coordinated by the Society for the Propagation
Pope Francis invites all baptized Christians
October every year. This year it will take place
of the Faith, a Pontifical Mission Society of the
during this month to a deeper encounter with
in every Catholic parish on the weekend of
Holy Father.
Jesus Christ, to be the Church of Christ on
Oct. 19-20. Known as the feast day for
This year, World Mission Sunday takes place
mission to the world.