Msgr. Roger J. Landry
The National Catholic Register
October 13, 2025
Earlier today Pope Leo did something no Pope has ever done. He recorded a video message for World Mission Sunday, making a direct appeal to Catholics across the world to “help me help missionaries across the world.”
The video is a little over a minute long, making it easy to share on social media, in parish and diocesan email blasts, on websites and other means. But it’s particularly apt to be shown before Masses on World Mission Sunday, Oct. 19, the day each year when Catholics across the globe pray for missionaries, for those to whom the missionaries are bringing the Gospel, and for greater missionary fire among all the baptized.
The Pope’s message, which was recorded in English, Spanish and Italian and likewise has English versions with French and Portuguese subtitles, begins by reminding everyone of the importance of World Mission Sunday and how all the faithful are summoned to pray as one to the Harvest Master for the laborers that harvest needs and for the success of that lifesaving harvest (Mt 9:38).
“Dear Brothers and Sisters,” the Holy Father says, “on World Mission Sunday every year, the whole Church prays, united, particularly for missionaries and the fruitfulness of their apostolic labors.”
He recalls his own experience for 22 years as an Augustine missionary.
“When I served as a missionary priest and bishop in Peru, I saw first-hand how the faith, the prayer and the generosity shown on World Mission Sunday can transform entire communities.”
Many of the faithful in the missionary territories and dioceses — categorized by the Vatican as “missionary” because they’re either too young, too poor, or too persecuted to be self-sustaining — sometimes cannot believe that those across the world care for them enough to be praying for them and sacrificing for them. Even before material help arrives to assist them to build churches and substation chapels, schools and catechetical centers, seminaries and formation houses, and underwrite the essential costs of running Church institutions, they are moved by the solidarity that their Catholic brothers and sisters show by interceding for them before God and contributing to their growth in faith. The former Bishop Robert Prevost experienced that transformational solidarity in the Diocese of Chiclayo and in the remote areas of Peru.
Pope Leo then asks pastors and parishioners to prioritize this annual day of prayer and support for the Missions.
“I urge every Catholic parish in the world to take part in World Mission Sunday. Your prayers, your support will help spread the Gospel, provide for pastoral and catechetical programs, help to build new churches, and care for the health and educational needs of our brothers and sisters in mission territories.”
Even though World Mission Sunday is on the Church’s annual calendar, the Holy Father knows that in some places, priests make no mention of it and celebrate it as if it were just another Sunday in Ordinary Time. They make no mention of it in the homily or the prayers of the faithful. They don’t promote it in their parish communications. Sometimes they don’t even take up the collection, which is the only universal collection mandated in the Church’s canon law (791.4). (The annual collections for Peter’s Pence, normally in June, and for the Holy Land on Good Friday, are not required in canon law but were instituted by papal decree).
In his special video, Pope Leo is asking every parish to participate. One great way to emphasize World Mission Sunday liturgically would be for priests to take advantage of the option to celebrate on this day one of the Votive Masses for the Evangelization of Peoples found in the back of the Roman Missal, which have beautiful prayers for the fruit of the Church’s mission and various reminders about our identity as missionary disciples in communion.
Another clear way to emphasize the importance of World Mission Sunday would be show the Holy Father’s short video before Mass begins. No one seeing and hearing the Holy Father’s unprecedented appeal for help will ever be able to think that World Mission Sunday is just another Sunday.
At the end of the video message, Pope Leo links this year’s World Mission Sunday with the Jubilee of Hope and reminds us of the mission Christ has entrusted to us.
“This October 19, as we reflect together on our baptismal call to be ‘missionaries of hope among the peoples,’ let us commit ourselves anew to the sweet and joyful task of bringing Christ Jesus our Hope to the ends of the earth.”
He finishes with his characteristic gratitude as we pray about our response to his appeal: “Thank you for everything you will do to help me help missionaries throughout the world. God bless you all!”
As the National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA, responsible for coordinating for the Vatican the World Mission Sunday collection, I have been able to witness during my first year on the job the truth of what Pope Leo says. So many of the missionary territories around the world totally depend on prayers and generosity of their brothers and sisters in the faith. They are buoyed that we know they exist, that we haven’t forgotten them, and that we want to help them.
In my visits to the missions and my conversations with missionaries, bishops, priests, religious, catechists and faithful, I have seen how many missionary dioceses survive exclusively on the “ordinary subsidy” — which is normally only about $40,000 annually — they receive from the World Mission Sunday collection. That is less than the monthly budget of a mid-size Catholic parish in the U.S. I’ve seen Churches built in substations, which otherwise would take decades of fundraising, for only $10,000 through “extraordinary subsidies” made possible by the collection.
The vast majority of priests in the missions I met receive no salary at all and survive only on Mass stipends sent from abroad — a small contribution for a Mass celebrated for a deceased loved one, a sick family member, or a special intention. That means five to ten dollars a day, from which most goes to the greater needs of poor families entrusted to them, if the priests are fortunate enough to receive Mass stipends. One missionary Cardinal told me that like his priests, his only income are the stipends for the Masses he celebrates, and that 85 percent of that goes to the needs of the Church and the poor.
The needs are vast. Twenty years ago, the Church in the United States used to raise over $60 million for the World Mission Sunday collection. Last year we raised about $20 million. Part of the reason for the decline has to do with lower Mass attendance rates. Another has to do with electronic giving, because it’s not always clear what the “second” collection is for and so parishioners give a standard amount, normally well in advance. A third reason is because some parishes have eliminated second collections altogether and normally just give a small percentage of the first collection to whatever diocesan, national and papal collection is supposed to be taken up. A fourth may be because people don’t really know where their money goes and deem they’ve already helped the missions through supporting the community or diocese of the preacher for most parish’s annual missionary cooperative appeal.
Whatever the reasons, missionary territories and dioceses really do depend on the generosity of American Catholics. Even at $20 million, the Church in the U.S. still constitutes one-third of all that is raised throughout the globe for the 1,124 missionary dioceses and territories under the care of the Holy Father through the Dicastery of Evangelization.
Concern for the urgent needs of the missions is one of the reasons why Pope Leo has made an unprecedent video appeal in addition to the World Mission Sunday Message Pope Francis wrote in anticipation at the beginning of the year. Without question, the first Vicar of Christ from the United States is hoping to find a particularly generous response from his fellow American Catholics for our brothers and sisters across the globe. This is a way that all of us, like the Augustinian from Chicago who now leads Christ’s family on earth, can faithfully to live out our vocation to be “missionaries of hope among the peoples.”