Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Journey to Nigeria Day 4
March 8, 2026
Here is the video of today’s reflection.
The YouTube generated transcript for today’s reflection is:
I’m Monsignor Roger Landry. It’s day four of our missionary pilgrimage to Nigeria. We have left Abuja, the federal capital, and come to Ondo state. We’re now at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Ondo. We remember what Pope Francis wrote about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. that there’s a real missionary dimension in Jesus’s sacred heart and as St. and Paul once said, “The goal is to light fire everywhere to take the love of the sacred heart of Jesus, the love that brought him into the world, to take on our humanity, the love that led him to give his life for us, the love that led him to hide himself under the appearance of bread and wine in the Eucharist, to take that love everywhere.” And so as we come into Ondo state and start to see some of the institutions built by that fire here in this diocese, we’re going to be praying for the people of Ondo. More later. God bless. I’m Monsignor Roger Landry National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies here in the church of of St. Francis Xavier in Ondo, Nigeria. It was in this very church among these very pews where assassins came on June 5th, 2022 to attack those who had come to do nothing other than to love the Lord Jesus. And we just had the extraordinary privilege of being able to celebrate mass among the incredibly faithful, courageous, and resilient people of this parish. You remember as well as I do what happened on June 5th, 2022 because Nigeria is ahead in a time zone. By the time we were going to mass in the morning in the US, we had already heard about what had happened here. Pope Francis had already heard and prayed for us in his angelus our Regina Caeli greeting. And so we were all the entire church united in praying for and with the people of this parish in the diocese of Ondo. I said and I was privileged to be able to preach at this beautiful mass with a packed church that there are few churches in the world that are known to every Catholic. One is St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Another is Notre Dame in Paris. But we all know St. Francis Xavier in Ondo, Nigeria. Because of the faith of the people here, because of the courage of the people here, because of the witness of the people here, then one day we will all have the privilege to celebrate the mass of the 41 martyrs of Owo from 2 years old all the way up until the ‘9s. We just saw there 41 graves. This is a witness. God takes people just like us, 46 chromosomes just like you and me, and makes us courageous, strong, and bearing witness to him. And we just were infused with some of the faith that was here. I want to talk to you more about this experience later. But this is day four of our missionary pilgrimage to Ondo and this is one of the summits of that pilgrimage coming here to St. Francis Xavier, the patron saint of the missions to meet these faithful people and priests who are missionaries still in a way that the whole world now knows. God bless you.
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