This is an abridged version of the late Holy Father’s message for World Mission Sunday 2025. The full text, with references, is available here.
‘Missionaries Of Hope Among All Peoples’
Dear brothers and sisters!
For World Mission Sunday in the Jubilee Year 2025, I have chosen the motto: ‘Missionaries Of Hope Among All Peoples’. It reminds individual Christians, and the entire Church, of our fundamental vocation to be messengers and builders of hope.
In the footsteps of Christ our hope
Christ is the fullness of salvation for all, and in a particular way for those whose only hope is God. Jesus commended everything to God the Father, obediently trusting in his saving plan for humanity; a plan of peace for a future full of hope (cf. Jeremiah 29:11). In this way, he became the divine Missionary of Hope: the supreme model of all those down the centuries who carry out their own Godgiven mission, even amidst extreme trials.
The Church is constantly impelled by the love of Christ to persevere, in union with him, on her missionary journey and to hear, like him and with him, the plea of suffering humanity.
May we too feel inspired to set out in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, to become signs and messengers of hope for all. May all the baptised, as missionary disciples of Christ, make his hope shine forth in every corner of the earth!
Christians, bearers and builders of hope among all peoples
In following Christ the Lord, Christians are called to hand on the Good News by sharing the concrete life situations of those whom they meet, and thus to be bearers and builders of hope. Indeed, ‘the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ.’ (Gaudium et Spes 1).
Here I think especially of those of you who are missionaries ad gentes. Following the Lord’s call, you have gone forth to other nations to make known the love of God in Christ. You are signs of the universal vocation of the baptised, to become missionaries among all peoples and witnesses to the great hope given us by the Lord Jesus.
Impelled by this great hope, Christian communities can be heralds of a new humanity in a world that shows serious symptoms of human crisis: a widespread sense of bewilderment, loneliness and indifference to the needs of the elderly, and a reluctance to make an effort to assist our neighbours in need. In the most technologically-advanced nations, true relationships are disappearing and our obsession with efficiency and attachment to material things are making us self-centred and incapable of selflessness. The Gospel, experienced in the life of a community, can restore us to a whole, healthy, redeemed humanity.
For this reason, I once more invite all of us to carry out the works mentioned in the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee (Nos. 7-15); with particular attention to the poorest and weakest, the sick, the elderly and those excluded from materialistic and consumerist society. And to do so in God’s ‘style’: with closeness, compassion and tenderness, cultivating a personal relationship with our brothers and sisters in their specific situation (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 127-128). Often they are the ones who teach us how to live in hope. Through personal contact, we will also convey the love of the compassionate heart of the Lord. ‘We have been sent to continue this mission: to be signs of the heart of Christ and the love of the Father, embracing the whole world’ (Address to Participants in the General Assembly of Missio [the Pontifical Mission Societies], 3 June 2023).
Renewing the mission of hope
Faced with the urgency of the mission of hope today, Christ’s disciples are called first to discover how to become ‘artisans’ of hope and restorers of an often distracted and unhappy humanity. Let us not forget that prayer is the primary missionary activity and at the same time ‘the first strength of hope’ (Catechesis, 20 May 2020).
By praying, we keep alive the spark of hope lit by God within us, so that it can become a great fire, which enlightens and warms everyone around us, also by those concrete actions and gestures that prayer itself inspires.
The missionary activity of handing down and shaping a mature faith in Christ is work that requires communion of prayer and action. Here I would emphasise the importance of the Church’s missionary synodality and the service rendered by Missio (the Pontifical Mission Societies) in promoting the missionary responsibility of the baptised and supporting new local Churches. I urge all of you – children, young people, adults and the elderly – to participate actively in the evangelising mission of the Church by your witness of life and prayer, by your sacrifices and by your generosity. Thank you!
Let us turn to Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ our hope. To her we entrust our prayer for this Jubilee and for the years yet to come: ‘May the light of Christian hope illumine every man and woman, as a message of God’s love addressed to all! And may the Church bear faithful witness to this message in every part of the world!’ (Bull: Spes Non Confundit, 6).
