Animating The Asian Church

INTRODUCTION

I had the privilege to serve as editor of World Mission from January 1994 to January 1999. During the early years of my service, many events marked the life and the mission of the Universal Church and they had a deep impact on the Church in Asia and on the still young World Mission magazine: the special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops (1st African Synod), in March 1994; Pope John Paul II’s visit to Manila for the 10th World Youth Day, from 12 to16 January 1995; and the beatification of St. Daniel Comboni, in March 1996.

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In those years, the Church, in general, and the Comboni family, in particular, were touched by a renewed spirit of commitment to the mission in announcing the Gospel of Christ to the whole world. Asia, the most populated and least evangelized continent, had become the main focus of this new missionary impulse.

It was evident that the evangelization of the Asian continent would only be possible through the leading participation of the Church in Asia. World Mission magazine was launched in 1989 to help animate and sustain the missionary spirit of the local churches of the continent so that they would be able to fulfill the mission that God has entrusted to them at that crucial moment in history.

World Mission magazine was, in its early years, a kind of forum that brought to the forefront the already rich and fruitful evangelizing experiences of Asian missionaries, both in their own continent and beyond its borders. World Mission helped many Christians in Asia, and in the Philippines, in particular, realize that their Churches, despite their poverty, could be missionaries to themselves and to other parts of the world which, in fact, they already were. Although it is almost 15 years since I left the magazine to continue my missionary service in Africa, I still remember, with admiration, the generous response of the people, clergy and laity to the missionary invitation. 

Many other people committed themselves to collaborate in the missionary activity of the Church in different ways. The enthusiastic response moved the Comboni Missionaries in the Philippines to create the “Friends of the Missions,” a group of Catholic Filipinos who, imbued with the missionary spirit, offered their friendship, their prayers and their material support for the spreading of the Gospel in Asia and elsewhere. World Mission magazine opened a section to accompany, form and animate this group of lay people, which, today, continues alive and vibrant.

May the Lord bless World Mission magazine in its 25th anniversary and keep it “young” at the service of the missionary Church in Asia. 

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