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Extraordinary Mission Month: Everyone is a Missioner
Pope Francis has proclaimed October to be an “Extraordinary Mission Month.”
-Catholic Missourian
It’s the 100th anniversary of a teaching that propelled the Church to think creatively about her missionary call.
The days after World War I caused Pope Benedict XV to chart a renewed, deeper sense of mission in his teaching document Maximum Illud.
That renewal continues to this day.
One hundred years ago, Pope Benedict XV talked about mission in terms of two goals: the salvation of souls and planting the Church.
These two goals were affirmed at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), but within a renewed sense of mission.
In that way, we seek not simply an other-worldly sense of mission, and not the colonial, conquering sense of mission we might have considered in the past.