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Pope Leo’s video message for the 100th World Mission Sunday
[October 18, 2026]
“One in Christ, United in Mission”
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
On this World Mission Sunday, we thank God for the many blessings he has given the Church since my predecessor, Pope Pius XI, started this celebration 100 years ago.
Pope Pius XI wanted it to foster
– a deeper understanding of the greatness of the missionary task in every diocese and parish.
– a deeper understanding of the importance of the missionary task.
– fervent prayer for the work of evangelization;
– encourage the missionary vocation and
– support for the work of the Pontifical Mission Societies.
Indeed, XI’s vision has borne fruit in my own life.
Looking back on my youth, I see how prayers to the Lord of the Harvest helped prepare my heart to hear Jesus’ call to become an Augustinian missionary.
Furthermore, the prayers and contributions of the faithful have encouraged and sustained my missionary work in Peru, as well as the work of countless others around the world.
For this reason, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has supported World Mission Sunday over the years.
In this centenary year, the theme, “One in Christ, United in Mission,” invites us to reflect on the fundamental task of nurturing the unity of the Church in following Christ, This is particularly relevant in light of our commitment and responsibility to spread the Gospel message of salvation to all people.
Through baptism, each of us becomes a member of the body of Christ and plays a unique role in Jesus’s saving work.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, our Lord calls us to cooperate as one family to bring everyone everywhere into a communion of faith in Christ.
Therefore, I reiterate the special appeal I made in the Message for World Mission Sunday: “Let us all commit to contributing to the great mission of evangelization — which is always a work of love — according to our own vocation and the gifts we have received.
Your prayers and practical support will greatly heop bring the Gospel of God’s love to everyone, especially the poorest and those most in need.” (Message for the 100th World Mission Day, 25 January 2026).
Finally, as we celebrate this centenary, I thank you in advance for all you will do to continue the legacy of World Mission Sunday and generously support the Church’s evangelizing mission around the world.
May the blessings of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit come down upon you and remain with you forever. Amen.
Pope Leo’s original Message for the 100th World Mission Day, 25 January 2026
As we reflect on our unity in Christ and our shared mission, let us allow divine grace to guide and inspire us. May we renew our missionary vocation and advance together in our commitment to evangelization in this “new missionary age” of the Church’s history.
1. One in Christ – Missionary disciples united in him and with our brothers and sisters
The mystery of union with Christ lies at the heart of mission.
Before his Passion, Jesus prayed to the Father, “May they all be one, as you are in me and I am in you. Just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (John 17:21).
These words reveal Jesus’s deepest desire as well as the identity of the church as a community of his disciples.
In other words, it is a communion that flows from and continues to be sustained by the Trinity.
It is a communion at the service of fraternity among all human beings and harmony with all creation.
Being a Christian is not primarily about practices or ideas. Rather, it is a life in union with Christ, sharing in his relationship with the Father through the Holy Spirit.
It means abiding in Christ like branches on a vine (John 15:4) and being immersed in the life of the Trinity.
This union fosters mutual communion among believers and is the source of all missionary fruitfulness.
As Saint John Paul II taught, “Communion represents both the source and the fruit of mission.”
In this context, the Church’s primary missionary responsibility is to renew and sustain spiritual and fraternal unity among its members.
However, in many situations, we encounter conflicts, polarization, misunderstandings, and a lack of mutual trust.
When this occurs within our communities, it undermines our witness.
The evangelizing mission that Christ entrusted to his disciples requires hearts that are reconciled and eager for communion above all else.
Therefore, it is crucial to strengthen ecumenical efforts with all Christian churches and build upon the opportunities arising from the joint celebration of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.
Lastly, being “one in Christ” calls us to keep our gaze fixed on the Lord so he is truly at the center of our lives, communities, words, actions, and interpersonal relationships. This leads us to say with amazement:
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Through constant listening to His Word and the grace of the sacraments, we can become living stones in the Church.
Today, the Church is called to embrace the core teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent papal magisterium, particularly those of Pope Francis.
As St. Paul says, “we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor 4:5).
For this reason, I reiterate the words of Saint Paul VI: “There is no true evangelization if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God are not proclaimed” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, 22).
The process of genuine evangelization begins in the heart of every Christian and reaches all of humanity.
Therefore, the more united we are in Christ, the better we will be able to carry out the mission he entrusts to us together.
2. United in mission – That the world may believe in Christ the Lord
The unity of the disciples is not an end in itself; rather, it is directed towards the mission.
Jesus makes this clear: “So that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:21).
The proclamation of the Gospel acquires its full communicative power through the witness of a reconciled, fraternal, and united community.
In this regard, it is worth recalling the motto of Blessed Paolo Manna: “The entire Church for the conversion of the whole world.” This motto succinctly expresses the ideal that inspired the establishment of the Pontifical Missionary Union in 1916.
On its 100(th) anniversary, I express my gratitude and blessing for its commitment to inspiring and fostering the missionary spirit of priests, consecrated persons, and the lay faithful while promoting the unity of all evangelizing efforts.
Indeed, no baptized person is exempt from or indifferent to the mission. Everyone participates in the great work that Christ has entrusted to his Church, each according to their own vocation and condition of life.
As Pope Francis has reminded us repeatedly, proclaiming the Gospel is always a harmonious, communal, and synodal action.
For this reason, unity in mission requires safeguarding and nurturing the spirituality of communion and missionary cooperation.
By fostering this attitude daily, divine grace gradually teaches us to see our brothers and sisters through the eyes of faith.
We learn to joyfully recognize the good that the Spirit inspires in each person, embrace diversity as a treasure, bear one another’s burdens, and always seek the unity that comes from above.
Indeed, we all share in one mission in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:5-6).
This spirituality is the daily expression of missionary discipleship.
It helps us recover a universal vision of the Church’s evangelizing mission and overcome a lack of coordinated efforts and the formation of factions among the followers of one Lord, such as “I belong to Paul” or “I belong to Apollos” (cf. 1 Cor. 1:10-12).
Missionary unity should not be understood as uniformity but as the convergence of different charisms for the same purpose: to make Christ’s love visible and invite everyone to encounter him.
Evangelization is achieved when local communities cooperate with one another, fully and harmoniously expressing their cultural, spiritual, and liturgical differences in the same faith.
Therefore, I encourage all Church institutions to strengthen their sense of ecclesial missionary communion and develop creative, concrete ways to cooperate with one another in the mission.
In this regard, I would like to thank the Pontifical Mission Societies for their service to missionary cooperation. I experienced their dedication firsthand during my ministry in Peru. The Societies—the Propagation of the Faith, the Holy Childhood, Saint Peter the Apostle, and the Pontifical Missionary Union—continue to nurture missionary awareness among the faithful of all ages and promote a global network of prayer and charity.
It is worth noting here that Blessed Pauline Marie Jaricot, the founder of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, established the Living Rosary two hundred years ago. Even today, it brings together many of the faithful worldwide to pray for spiritual and missionary needs. It is also worth remembering that Pius XI established World Mission Day in 1926 following a proposal from the Society of the Propagation of the Faith.
The annual offerings collected on this day are distributed by the Society, on behalf of the Pope, to support the Church’s various missionary needs.
Together and individually, the four societies still play a valuable role in the Church.
They are a living sign of unity and ecclesial missionary communion. I invite everyone to work with them in a spirit of gratitude.
3. Mission to love – Proclaiming, living and sharing God’s faithful love
If unity is the condition of mission, love is its essence.
The good news we are sent to proclaim to the world is not an abstract ideal.
It is the gospel of God’s faithful love that became flesh in the life and person of Jesus Christ.
The mission of the disciples and the Church as a whole is to continue the mission of Christ in the Holy Spirit—a mission born of, lived in, and leading to love.
In fact, in his great prayer to the Father before his Passion, the Lord himself concludes, after invoking unity among his disciples: “May the love with which you have loved me be in them, and may they be in me” (Jn 17:26).
The apostles went out to evangelize, impelled by the love of Christ. (cf. 2 Cor 5:14).
Similarly, throughout the centuries, countless Christians—martyrs, confessors, and missionaries—have sacrificed their lives to share this divine love with the world.
Thus, guided by the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of Love—the Church’s evangelizing mission will continue until the end of time.
I would like to express my special gratitude to today’s ad gentes missionaries.
Like Saint Francis Xavier, they have left their homelands, families, and any sense of security to proclaim the Gospel and bring Christ and his love to places that are often challenging, impoverished, conflict-ridden, and culturally distant.
Despite adversity and human limitations, they joyfully give themselves completely because they know that Christ and his gospel are the greatest treasures we can offer.
Through their perseverance, they demonstrate that God’s love transcends all barriers. The world needs these courageous witnesses of Christ, and ecclesial communities need new missionary vocations.
We must keep them close to our hearts and continually pray to the Father for them.
May He grant us young people and adults who are willing to leave everything behind to evangelize to the ends of the earth!
I make a special appeal to the whole Church to join the missionaries in evangelizing through our lives in Christ, through prayer, and through our contributions to the missions, filled with admiration for men and women missionaries.
As Saint Francis of Assisi said, “Love is not loved,” and on the eight-hundredth anniversary of his passing to heaven, we look to him in a special way.
Let us find inspiration in his desire to live in the love of the Lord and transmit it to those near and far. As he said, “This love, who has loved us so much, is to be loved much” (Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, The Life of Saint Francis, ch. IX, 1; Fonti Francescane, 1161).
We should also draw inspiration from the zeal of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who said she would continue her mission even after death: “In heaven, I will desire the same thing as I do now on earth: to love Jesus and make him loved” (Letter 220 to Abbé Bellière, February 24, 1897).
Inspired by these testimonies, let us all commit to contributing to the great mission of evangelization, a work of love, according to our vocation and the gifts we have received.
Your prayers and practical support, particularly on World Mission Day, will greatly help bring the Gospel of God’s love to everyone, especially the poorest and those most in need.
Every gift, no matter how small, becomes a meaningful act of missionary communion.
I renew my heartfelt gratitude for all that you will do to support missionaries around the world.
To foster spiritual communion, I offer this simple prayer and my blessing:
Holy Father, make us one in Christ, rooted in his love that unites and renews.
May all members of the Church be united in their mission. May they be docile to the Holy Spirit and courageous in bearing witness to the Gospel. May they proclaim and embody your faithful love for all creatures daily.
Bless all missionaries, support their efforts, and watch over them!
Mary, Queen of Missions, accompany our evangelization efforts around the world.
Make us instruments of peace & help the world recognize Christ as the light that saves.
