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Pope Francis’ message for World Mission Day 2025
19 October 2025
1. In the footsteps of Christ our hope
2.”Missionaries of Hope among All Peoples”
3. Renewing the mission of hope
Dear brothers and sisters!
For World Mission Day in the Jubilee Year 2025, whose central mission is hope,
I have chosen the theme: “Missionaries of Hope Among All Peoples”, whichreminds every Christian and the Church, the community of the baptized, of our fundamental vocation to be messengers and builders of hope, following in the footsteps of Christ,
I wish you all a time of grace with the faithful God who has regenerated us in the risen Christ “for a living hope” (1 Pet 1:3-4 – Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you).
Here, I would like to recall some relevant aspects of our Christian missionary identity, so that we may be guided by the Spirit of God and burn with holy zeal to begin a new evangelization stage in the Church, sent to rekindle hope in a world overwhelmed by dense shadows.
1. In the footsteps of Christ our hope
As we celebrate the first ordinary Jubilee of the third millennium, following the Jubilee of the Year of 2000, we keep our gaze fixed on Christ, the center of history, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8).
In the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus declared that the Scriptures were fulfilled in the “today” of his historical presence.
In doing so, he revealed that he was the one sent by the Father with the anointing of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God and to inaugurate the “year of the Lord’s favor” for all humanity (Lk 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”).
In this mystical “today”, that lasts until the end of the world, Christ is the fullness of salvation for all, and in a special way for those whose hope is in God.
In his earthly life, “he went about doing good and healing all” (Acts 10:38) – restoring hope in God to the needy and the people.
He experienced all our human weaknesses, except that of sin, even those critical moments that could lead to despair, such as in the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross.
Jesus entrusted everything to God the Father, obediently trusting in his saving plan of humanity, a plan of peace for a future full of hope (cf. Jer 29:11 – I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.).
In this way, he became the divine missionary of hope, the supreme model for all those down the centuries who have carried out their own God-given mission, even in the midst of extreme trials.
The Lord Jesus continues his ministry of hope for humanity through his disciples, sent to all peoples and mystically accompanied by him.
Even today he continues to bend over every poor, afflicted, desperate and oppressed person, to pour on their wounds ‘the oil of consolation and the wine of hope’ (Preface “Jesus the Good Samaritan”).
Obedient to her Lord and Master, and in the same spirit of service, the Church, the community of Christ’s missionary disciples, continues this mission, by offering her life for all in the midst of humanity.
The Church, while facing, on the one hand, persecutions, tribulations and difficulties, and, on the other hand, her own imperfections and falls, because of the weaknesses of her members, is constantly impelled by the love of Christ to go forward united with him on this missionary journey and to welcome, like him and with him, the cry of humanity; indeed, the groaning of every creature, in expectation of the definitive redemption.
This is the Church that the Lord has always and forever called to follow in his footsteps; ‘not a static Church, [but] a missionary Church, that walks with the Lord on the ways of the world’.
Therefore, let us also be inspired to follow in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus to be, with Him and in Him, signs and messengers of hope for all, in every place and circumstance in which God allows us to live. May all the baptized, disciples-missionaries of Christ, make our own hope shine in every corner of the world
2. Christians, bearers and builders of hope among peoples
Following Christ the Lord, Christians are called to announce the Good News by sharing in the concrete living situations of the people they meet, thus becoming bearers and builders of hope.
In fact “the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the people of our time, especially the poor and those who suffer, are at the same time the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of Christ’s disciples. There is nothing truly human which does not find an echo in his heart’ (Gaudium et Spes 1).
This famous affirmation of the Second Vatican Council, which expresses the sentiments and style of Christian communities of all times, continues to inspire its members and helps them to walk with their brothers and sisters in the world.
I am thinking especially of you, missionaries ad gentes, who, have responded to God’s call to other nations to make known the love of God in Christ.
I thank you with of my heart!
Your lives are a concrete response to the command of the Risen Christ, who sent his disciples to evangelize all peoples
(Mt 28:18-20 – Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”).
In this way, you point to the universal vocation of the baptized to be, in the power of the Holy Spirit and through daily commitment, missionaries among the peoples, of that immense hope which Jesus, the Lord, gives us.
The horizon of this hope goes transcends temporary worldly realities and opens up to the divine realities that we are already asking for in the present.
In fact, as Saint Paul VI recalled, salvation in Christ, which the Church offers to all as a gift of God’s mercy, is not only ‘immanent, tailored to material or even spiritual needs which […] are totally identified with temporal desires, hopes, affairs and struggles, but a salvation which transcends all these limits to be realized in communion with the one Absolute God, a transcendent, eschatological salvation which certainly begins in this life, but which has its fulfilment in eternity’.
Inspired by this great hope, Christian communities can be signs of a new humanity in a world that, in the more ‘developed’ areas, shows serious symptoms of a crisis of the human person: a widespread sense of disorientation, loneliness and abandonment of the elderly; difficulty in being available to help those around us.
In the most technologically advanced nations, closeness is declining; we are all connected, but we are not in relationship.
Efficiency and attachment to things and ambitions make us self-centred and incapable of altruism.
The Gospel, lived in community, can restore us to a whole, healthy, redeemed humanity.
I therefore renew the invitation to carry out the works indicated in the Bull of Convocation of the Jubilee (nn. 7-15), with particular attention to the poorest and weakest, the sick, the elderly, those who are excluded from a materialistic and consumerist society.
And to do so in God’s style: with closeness, compassion and tenderness, taking care of the personal relationship with the brothers and sisters in their concrete situation (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 127-128).
Often it is they who will teach us how to live in hope.
And through personal contact we will be able to pass on the love of the Lord’s merciful Heart.
We will experience that ‘the Heart of Christ […] is the living nucleus of the first proclamation’ (Encyclical Dilexit nos, 32).
Drinking from this source, the hope received from God can be offered with simplicity
(1 Pet 1:21 – 21 Through him you have confidence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God), bringing to others the same consolation with which we have been consoled by God (2 Cor 1:3-4 – Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God).
In the human and divine Heart of Jesus, God wants to speak to the heart of each person, attracting everyone with his love.
We have been sent to continue this mission: to be a sign of the Heart of Christ and of the Father’s love, that embraces the whole world.
3. Renewing the mission of hope
Today, in the face of the urgency of the mission of hope, the disciples of Christ are called first of all to be formed, to be ‘artisans’ of hope and restorers of a humanity that is often distracted and unhappy.
For this, it is necessary to renew in us the Easter spirituality, which we live in every Eucharistic celebration and especially in the Easter Triduum, the center and culmination of the liturgical year.
We have been baptized into the redemptive death and resurrection of Christ, into the Lord’s Passover, which marks the eternal springtime of history.
We are then ‘people of springtime’, with a gaze always full of hope to share with everyone, because in Christ ‘we believe and know that death and hatred are not the last words’ about human existence (cf. Catechesis, 23 August 2017).
Therefore, from the Paschal Mysteries, which are actualized in liturgical celebrations and in the sacraments, we continually receive the strength of the Holy Spirit with the zeal, determination and patience to work in the vast field of evangelizing the world.
‘The risen and glorious Christ is the profound source of our hope, and we will not lack his help in fulfilling the mission entrusted to us’ (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 275).
In Him we live and witness to that holy hope which is ‘a gift and a task for every Christian’.
Missionaries of hope are men and women of prayer, because ‘the person who hopes is a person who prays’, as the Venerable Cardinal Van Thuan said, who kept hope alive during the long tribulation of prison thanks to the strength he received from persevering prayer and the Eucharist.
Let us not forget that prayer is the first missionary action and, at the same time, ‘the first force of hope’ (Catechesis, 20 May 2020).
Therefore, let us renew the mission of hope, beginning with prayer, especially with the Word of God and especially with the Psalms, which are a great symphony of prayer whose composer is the Holy Spirit.
The Psalms teach us to hope in adversity, to recognize the signs of hope and to have the constant ‘missionary’ desire that God be praised by all peoples (cf. Ps 41:12; 67:4).
By praying, we keep alive the flame of hope that God has lit in us, so that it may become a great bonfire, illuminating and warming all those around us, even with concrete actions and gestures inspired by this same prayer.
Finally, evangelization, like the character of Christian hope, is always a communitarian process.
Such a process does not end with the first proclamation and baptism but continues with the building up of Christian communities by accompanying each baptized person along the way of the Gospel.
In modern society, belonging to the Church is never a reality acquired once and for all. Therefore, the missionary action of transmitting and forming a mature faith in Christ is the paradigm of all the Church’s work, a work which requires communion of prayer and action.
I continue to insist on this missionary synodality of the Church, as well as on the service of the Pontifical Mission Societies in promoting the missionary responsibility of the baptized and in supporting the new particular Churches.
And I exhort all of you – children, young people, adults, the elderly – to participate actively in our common evangelizing mission by the witness of your lives and your prayer, your sacrifices and your generosity.
For this we thank you with all our heart!
Dear sisters and brothers, let us turn to Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, our hope.
To her we entrust this wish for the Jubilee and for the years to come: ‘That the light of Christian hope may reach all people as a message of God’s love for all. And may the Church be a faithful witness to this proclamation in every part of the world’ (Bull Spes non confundit, 6).
Rome, St John Lateran, 25 January 2025, Feast of the Conversion of the Apostle Paul.
Francis
