The document shares news about missionaries and missionary work. It discusses the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Central Missionary Office and nomination of a General Councilor for Missions. It invites the recipients to pray for missionaries past and present. It also provides an update on the preparation for the Panamazon Synod in October and encourages a sense of missionary passion.

1. Dearest Sisters,
I greet you with gratitude and much joy after having lived the experience of the Spiritual
Exercises in the Holy Land. I remembered you there with great affection, asking the Lord for the
gift of fidelity for each of you and also the gift of new missionary vocations ad gentes, for the
Church and for the Institute.
The New-missionaries of this year are already leaving. Some will go to learn the language.
Others will go to their Province of destination, and still others to prepare their Visa and thus begin
to live as true and proper missionaries ad gentes. In the name of each of them, I thank you for your
accompaniment and closeness during this year of preparation and study in Rome.
In the month of January, I had indicated some events and celebrations that directly regard
the life of the Missions Sector during 2019. Among them, I had indicated the 50th
Anniversary of
the creation of the Central Missionary Office (today the Missions Sector) and of the nomination of a
General Councilor with the specific responsibility of the Missions during Special General Chapter
XV, which had the task of re-elaborating the Constitutions according to the directives of Vatican
Council II. GCXV took place from January 16 to May 29, 1969.
Thus, I invite you to unite yourselves with the Missions Sector during Vespers of June 14, to
sing the Magnificat, thanking the Lord for the Genera Councilors who preceded me and who
animated the missionary heart of the Institute with such devotion and dedication:
- Sr. Lidia Carini (1969 - 1981) and Sr. Carmen Martín-Moreno (1981-1984), in
memoriam!
- Sr. Lina Chiandotto (1984 - 1996), still a missionary ad gentes in Cambodia.
- Sr. Ciri Hernández (1996 - 2008), now a missionary inter gentes in Spain.
Enterprising women who gave a real impetus to the missionary dimension of the Institute
according to Vatican II. To them our THANK YOU and our prayer.
The Apostolic Letter ‘Maximum Illud’ that marks its centenary during November 2019,
insists that the Missionaries remember the need to propagate with their life the kingdom of God and
not that of humankind; it is necessary to add citizens to the heavenly country and not the earthly
one. According to ‘Maximum Illud’, missionaries must forget their earthly Country and aim for
their heavenly one, and never worry about ‘spreading’ the power and the glory of their Country, in
this way the people of the place will well understand what the missionary desires and seeks from
them, or if they ‘by chance had other aims outside of their spiritual welfare’.
A missionary is always ‘one sent by Christ’, never ‘sent by their Country’. “Catholic
Missionaries who are worthy of this name… act in such a way that each can be undoubtedly
Rome, 14 June 2019.

2. recognized as a minister” of the religion which “embraces all human beings who adore God in spirit
and in truth, and is not a stranger in any Nation, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision
and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all”.
Blessed Sr. Maria Troncatti, in letter (69) to her niece, Sr. Candida Savardi of the Sisters of
the Child Mary, who had expressed to her an affectionate request in the name of her relatives to
accept the proposal of a return to Italy, responded by recalling the time of the radical offering of her
life to God for the missions and mentions the price and the difficulty of that detachment from
everything.
“My dearest…you tell me that you are always hoping to see me come back. This is
impossible at my age, and not the fault of my good superiors. They have told me many, many times
that if I desire to return to Italy to see my relatives, they would let me do this. I never accepted for
the simple reason that I had begged the superiors to accept my petition to send me to the missions,
precisely to the indigenes. This has always been my desire. When the day of departure came, the
detachment from the superiors cost me a lot; detachment from my parents, from the superiors, from
my country, language, from everything. As I boarded the steamer, I said good-bye forever. We will
see each other again in Heaven!”
What can we say in the face of such radicalness? Only a heart in love with the Lord is
capable of feeling His call and leave…becoming a sign and expression of His foreseeing love (C 1),
a sign of God’s gratuitous love (C 18), sign and mediation of the love of Christ, the Good Shepherd
(C 63).
Dearest Sisters,
On this June 14, I invite you to pray for the community of ‘B. Maria Troncatti’ of Tolo
(Democratic Republic of the Congo), founded on August 15, 2013, belonging to Our Lady of
Africa Province (AFC). A warm greeting to the sisters of that community and the certainty of our
prayer, invoking above all, the gift of peace and justice for their Nation.
I wish to conclude my message by reminding you that the Church goes ahead with sure step
in the preparation of the Panamazon Synod, ‘Amazon: new paths for the Church and for an
integral Ecology’ which will take place in Rome on 6 to 27 October. The Extraordinary
Missionary Month also proposes it as a strong time of Kairós, missionary dynamism, in which the
Church wishes to reach everyone to bring the Good News of Jesus, of life, and of hope! I pray that
all this will be lived with joy and a sense of belonging to the Church, not to fill our agendas, but to
fill our heart with great, really great missionary passion.
A strong sisterly embrace and communion always in prayer and in the mission.
Councilor for the Missions