October 18

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

In the city of Rome, there are various “colleges” that exist for the training of priests. It’s more proper to call them seminaries; some of these are so old that they were already in place before the term “seminary” was in use. Often, they fall along geographical or national lines; with the likes of the French College, the German College, the North American College (my alma mater) to name a few. But there’s one distinct college that has no geographical ties, with students from the world over, known as the ‘Collegio Urbano’ or the Urbanianum as we used to call it. It exists to train priests for the mission territories of the world.

Kind of a strange thing to consider: how do the mission territories get priests to serve them? Given that this weekend is World Mission Sunday, it’s worth thinking about the ministerial needs and realities of those places where the Gospel is being proclaimed to peoples still in need of hearing it for the first time or in places where the Church is still being established. We probably take for granted how widespread the Christian message is in our particular society. I’m not saying everyone is Christian or that there’s still not work to be done here in America to evangelize, but there’s a certain knowledge of Christ that we have that other places do not. The fact that Christmas is such a big deal and nearly universally celebrated in the US is indicative of that. That’s not the case in other parts of the world.

And so, the idea that these places need ministry, need the Sacraments, but don’t have the infrastructure of seminaries and diocesan offices and programs and the like, is something that is worth considering. For many mission territories, the wider Church often helps supply them with priests, with lay and religious missionaries, with physical and spiritual supplies. But when the local mission territories start to develop somewhat on their own, the Church continues to support them, with things like the Urbanianum, allowing local men to become priests to serve their people back home. But that doesn’t happen in a vacuum and our monetary support for the Missions helps to make such things (and many others), possible.

It’s worth noting that before the establishment of my seminary, the North American College back in 1859, there were American students at the Urbanianum too. We may have a Pope that is American, but we are not so old a church that we should forget that we too were once missionary territory. And yet, today the American Church is well established, and has come into its own, and can help support the Church in the missionary territories of today. Please keep the missions in your prayers, that the Good News may be proclaimed and heard effectively, and if you can support the missions financially this weekend, please consider doing so.

Peace and Goodness, Fr. Dan