To honor Pope Francis’s legacy, the Holy Cross Mission Center is pleased to present the below quotes on mission from his thirteen World Mission Day Messages from 2013-2025. May he rest in the eternal peace of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

May 19, 2013:

1. Missionary spirit is not only about geographical territories, but about peoples, cultures and individuals, because the “boundaries” of faith do not only cross places and human traditions, but the heart of each man and each woman.

June 8, 2014:

2. I invite you to immerse yourself in the joy of the Gospel and nurture a love that can light up your vocation and your mission.

May 24, 2015:

3. Since Christ’s entire existence had a missionary character, so too, all those who follow him closely must possess this missionary quality.

4. Mission is a passion for Jesus and at the same time a passion for his people.

5. I appeal in particular to young people, who are capable of courageous witness and generous deeds, even when these are countercultural: Do not allow others to rob you of the ideal of a true mission, of following Jesus through the total gift of yourself.

6. The mission of the servants of the Word – bishops, priests, religious and laity – is to allow everyone, without exception, to enter into a personal relationship with Christ.

May 15, 2016: Missionary Church, Witness of Mercy

7. By virtue of the missionary mandate, the Church cares for those who do not know the Gospel, because she wants everyone to be saved and to experience the Lord’s love.

8. In many places evangelization begins with education, to which missionary work dedicates much time and effort…

9. All peoples and cultures have the right to receive the message of salvation which is God’s gift to every person.

10. Missionaries know from experience that the Gospel of forgiveness and mercy can bring joy and reconciliation, justice and peace.

June 4, 2017: Mission at the heart of the Christian faith

11. The Church is missionary by nature; otherwise, she would no longer be the Church of Christ, but one group among many others that soon end up serving their purpose and passing away.

12. The Church’s mission is enlivened by a spirituality of constant exodus. We are challenged “to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the peripheries in need of the light of the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium, 20).

13. The Church’s mission impels us to undertake a constant pilgrimage across the various deserts of life, through the different experiences of hunger and thirst for truth and justice.

14. The Church’s mission inspires a sense of constant exile, to make us aware, in our thirst for the infinite, that we are exiles journeying towards our final home, poised between the “already” and “not yet” of the Kingdom of Heaven.

15. Young people are the hope of mission.

May 20, 2018: “Together with young people, let us bring the Gospel to all”

16. “Together with young people, let us bring the Gospel to all”

17. Every man and woman is a mission; that is the reason for our life on this earth.

18. You too, young friends, by your baptism have become living members of the Church; together we have received the mission to bring the Gospel to everyone.

19. How many young people find in missionary volunteer work a way of serving the “least” of our brothers and sisters (cf. Mt 25:40), promoting human dignity and witnessing to the joy of love and of being Christians! These ecclesial experiences educate and train young people not only for professional success, but also for developing and fostering their God-given gifts in order better to serve others. These praiseworthy forms of temporary missionary service are a fruitful beginning and, through vocational discernment, they can help you to decide to make a complete gift of yourselves as missionaries.

June 9, 2019: Baptized and Sent: The Church of Christ on Mission in the World

20. Each of us is a mission to the world, for each of us is the fruit of God’s love.

21. Today too, the Church needs men and women who, by virtue of their baptism, respond generously to the call to leave behind home, family, country, language and local Church, and to be sent forth to the nations, to a world not yet transformed by the sacraments of Jesus Christ and his holy Church.

May 31, 2020: Here I am, send me (Is 6:8)

22. …the missionary journey of the whole Church continues in light of the words found in the account of the calling of the prophet Isaiah: “Here am I, send me” (6:8). This is the ever new response to the Lord’s question: “Whom shall I send?”

23. Mission is a free and conscious response to God’s call. Yet we discern this call only when we have a personal relationship of love with Jesus present in his Church.

24. God continues to look for those whom he can send forth into the world and to the nations to bear witness to his love, his deliverance from sin and death, his liberation from evil (cf. Mt 9:35-38; Lk 10:1-12).

25. May the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of Evangelization and Comforter of the Afflicted, missionary disciple of her Son Jesus, continue to intercede for us and sustain us.

January 6, 2021: “We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20)

26. Once we experience the power of God’s love, and recognize his fatherly presence in our personal and community life, we cannot help but proclaim and share what we have seen and heard.

27. As Christians, we cannot keep the Lord to ourselves: the Church’s evangelizing mission finds outward fulfilment in the transformation of our world and in the care of creation.

28. I like to think that “even those who are most frail, limited and troubled can be missionaries in their own way, for goodness can always be shared, even if it exists alongside many limitations” (Christus Vivit, 239).

29. We know that the call to mission is not a thing of the past, or a romantic leftover from earlier times. Today too Jesus needs hearts capable of experiencing vocation as a true love story that urges them to go forth to the peripheries of our world as messengers and agents of compassion.

January 6, 2022: “You shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8)

30. Every Christian is called to be a missionary and witness to Christ.

31. To evangelize is the very identity of the Church.

32. It was no coincidence that the Lord Jesus sent his disciples out on mission in pairs; the witness of Christians to Christ is primarily communitarian in nature.

33. [The example of a Christian life and the proclamation of Christ] are the two lungs with which any community must breathe, if it is to be missionary.

34. All Christ’s missionary disciples are called to recognize the essential importance of the Spirit’s work, to dwell in his presence daily and to receive his unfailing strength and guidance.

35. Dear brothers and sisters, I continue to dream of a completely missionary Church, and a new era of missionary activity among Christian communities. I repeat Moses’ great desire for the people of God on their journey: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” (Num 11:29). Indeed, would that all of us in the Church were what we already are by virtue of baptism: prophets, witnesses, missionaries of the Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the ends of the earth! Mary, Queen of the Missions, pray for us!

January 6, 2023: Hearts on fire, feet on the move (cf. Lk 24:13-35)

36. I desire to express my closeness in Christ to all the men and women missionaries in the world, especially to those enduring any kind of hardship.

37. Every missionary disciple is called to become, like Jesus and in him, through the working of the Holy Spirit, one who breaks the bread and one who is broken bread for the world.

38. By lovingly cultivating this communion with Christ, the missionary disciple can become a mystic in action.

39. One cannot truly encounter the risen Jesus without being set on fire with enthusiasm to tell everyone about him.

40. All of us can contribute to this missionary movement: with our prayers and activities, with material offerings and the offering of our sufferings, and with our personal witness.

41. Just as the two disciples of Emmaus told the others what had taken place along the way (cf. Lk 24:35), so too our proclamation will be a joyful telling of Christ the Lord, his life, his passion, his death and resurrection, and the wonders that his love has accomplished in our lives.

42. Our Lady of the Way, Mother of Christ’s missionary disciples and Queen of Missions, pray for us!

January 25, 2024: Go and invite everyone to the banquet (cf. Mt 22:9)

43. Mission, we see, is a tireless going out to all men and women, in order to invite them to encounter God and enter into communion with him. Tireless!

44. May all of us, the baptized, be ready to set out anew, each according to our state in life, to inaugurate a new missionary movement, as at the dawn of Christianity!

45. The mission of bringing the Gospel to every creature must necessarily imitate the same “style” of the One who is being preached.

46. Let us never forget, then, that in our missionary activities we are asked to preach the Gospel to all: “Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, [we] should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet” (Evangelii Gaudium, 14).

47. Christ’s missionary disciples have always had a heartfelt concern for all persons, whatever their social or even moral status.

48. The mission for all requires the commitment of all.

January 25, 2025: Missionaries of Hope Among All Peoples

49. Faced with the urgency of the mission of hope today, Christ’s disciples are called first to discover how to become “artisans” of hope and restorers of an often distracted and unhappy humanity.

50. Missionaries of hope are men and women of prayer

51. Let us not forget that prayer is the primary missionary activity and at the same time “the first strength of hope” (Catechesis, 20 May 2020).

Published May 2025