On January 6, Pope Francis issued a message for World Mission Sunday, which will take place on October 23. World Mission Sunday was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1926 and first commemorated in 1927.

The message, entitled “You shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8), has three sections: “The call of every Christian to bear witness to Christ,” “The perennial relevance of a mission of universal evangelization,” and “Let us always be strengthened and guided by the Spirit.”

“Dear brothers and sisters, I continue to dream of a completely missionary Church, and a new era of missionary activity among Christian communities,” Pope Francis concluded. “I repeat Moses’ great desire for the people of God on their journey: ‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!’ (Num 11:29). Indeed, would that all of us in the Church were what we already are by virtue of baptism: prophets, witnesses, missionaries of the Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the ends of the earth! Mary, Queen of the Missions, pray for us!”