“Without Him we can do nothing.” The teaching of Pope Francis on mission

by Gianni Valente

Rome ( Fides Agency) - “I joined the Jesuits because I was struck by their missionary vocation, their constant movement towards the frontiers.” This is what Pope Francis said about himself. Then, the young Jesuit who dreamed of becoming a missionary in Japan became Bishop of Rome. And he filled his ministry as Successor of Peter with mission.

The desire and demand to see the impetus of a renewed missionary spirit grow throughout the Church have become like the beating heart of his magisterium. This is a “priority” to which he wished to give objective and institutional emphasis when, in the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium on the Roman Curia, promulgated in 2022, he established that the Dicastery for Evangelization should be “presided over by the Roman Pontiff.” “The Church’s “missionary conversion”, we read in the Preamble to that document, “aims to renew her as a mirror of Christ’s own mission of love (...). She herself becomes increasingly radiant as she brings to humanity the supernatural gift of faith (...).”

Pope Francis' missionary passion has been the most intense and tenacious thread running through his entire Petrine ministry. He did not present missionary work as an urgent task alongside others, as one of the areas in which to invest the Church's energies. Rather, Pope Francis has repeatedly insisted that apostolic concern is the only appropriate way to live and make fruitful and useful all ecclesial dynamics, which would otherwise be destined to become role-playing games for “self-employed” clerics. His intention was to encourage “customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented ”. (Evangelii gaudium, 27).

Pope Bergoglio did not write speculative treatises on mission. He did not define a structured academic thought on “missionary planning.” Instead, his missionary concern permeated his entire ordinary magisterium, scattering hints, references, insights, and suggestions of a missionary nature in a vast number of homilies, catecheses, speeches, and interventions. This “missionary magisterium” has nevertheless been gathered and defined around a number of key points, from the beginning to the end of his pontificate, starting with the “programmatic text” published in the first months of his ministry as Successor of Peter.

The “missionary shock” of Evangelii gaudium

With the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium “on the proclamation of the Gospel in today's world,” published on November 24, 2013, Pope Francis wanted to “present some guidelines which can encourage and guide the whole Church in a new phase of evangelization, one marked by enthusiasm and vitality.” (EG 17). It was a unique, practical, and at times impetuous magisterial text, repeating with unprecedented emphasis that the proclamation of the Gospel is the raison d'être of the Church.

In that text, the Bishop of Rome who came from Buenos Aires reiterated that the mission of proclaiming to others the salvation promised in the Gospel, the “first proclamation”—which the traditional language of the Church defines with the Greek expression “Kerygma” (derived from the verb meaning “to shout, to proclaim”)—is an indispensable element in the mechanism of salvation. But this mission does not arise from itself, by virtue of good intentions, reasoning, or efforts of will. It can only be unleashed through an encounter with Christ and with the gestures He performs today. An encounter that arouses faith and impels those who have lived that experience to communicate it to others.

Witnessing to the Gospel of Christ, explained Pope Bergoglio, quoting the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi by Pope Paul VI, who was always dear to him, can never be understood as “as a heroic individual undertaking, (...). Jesus is “the first and greatest evangelizer”. In every activity of evangelization, the primacy always belongs to God,” (EG 12).
“ Whenever we take a step towards Jesus,” insisted the Bishop of Rome, " we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms (EG, 3). Pope Francis also coined a new Spanish word, ‘primerear,’ to describe the prevenient work of Christ's love as the source of all missionary dynamism. A prevenient grace that manifests itself as an attraction wrought by Christ himself, which captivates hearts and calls them to himself. For this reason, Pope Bergoglio repeated insistently, quoting his predecessor Benedict XVI, in the mission of proclaiming the Gospel, we do not work out of a desire for proselytism, but “by attraction.”

The proclamation of the Gospel, Pope Francis emphasized in Evangelii gaudium, is not reserved for supposed “professionals of the Kerygma,” qualified by virtue of some “training” course. Baptism is sufficient to proclaim the Gospel, since “every baptized person, whatever his or her role in the Church or the degree of his or her faith formation, is an active agent of evangelization.” For “anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus:” (EG 120).

On the path of Christian faith, Pope Francis insisted, we must not think that after the first steps “the kerygma is abandoned in favor of a formation that is presumed to be more ‘solid.’” Instead, in the experience of witnessing and transmitting the joy of the Gospel to others, “there is nothing more solid, profound, secure, meaningful and wisdom -filled than this proclamation” (EG 165). And every authentic apostolic act, including homilies at Mass and every catechism lesson, must echo the heart of the Christian proclamation.

One of the underlying themes that runs throughout Evangelii gaudium can be identified with the expression “facilitate.” The goal of every apostolic endeavor is to make it easier to encounter Jesus. Recognizing the Church as a “people on mission” also falls within this scope.
The salvation promised by Jesus and joyfully proclaimed by the Church, Pope Francis warns in Evangelii gaudium, “is for everyone,” and for this reason “God has created a way to unite every human being of every time. He has chosen to call them as a people and not as isolated beings.” Because “No one is saved by himself or herself, individually, or by his or her own efforts.” And the people “whom God has chosen and called is the Church. Jesus did not tell the apostles to form an exclusive and elite group. He said: “Go and make disciples of all nations”. (EG 113).

The People of God—as Evangelii gaudium also recognizes—is not a collective lobby engaged in self-promotion. It is the people of those who have encountered Jesus and have begun to follow him. For this reason, the Christian journey is never a matter reserved for restless climbers of some ascetic and spiritual peak. And the Church-People of God is not a congregation of activists of a philosophy or a religious idea. It is simply a people of the baptized, who can bear witness to the gift of faith in the ordinary and daily circumstances of their lives. “Now that Church seeks to experience a profound missionary renewal, t we read in the Apostolic Exhortation, “here is a kind of preaching which falls to each of us as a daily responsibility.It has to do with bringing the Gospel to the people we meet, whether they be our neighbours or complete strangers.” (EG 127).

The Holy Spirit, writes Pope Francis in his Exhortation, guides the People of God “in truth and leads them to salvation.” He endows them with an “instinct” of faith—the sensus fidei—which helps them recognize and follow the workings of Christ's grace. This is a gift of the Spirit that is manifested with singular clarity in what Evangelii gaudium calls “spirituality” or “popular piety.” These are gestures and practices through which “one can say that “a people continuously evangelizes itself,” and which must be recognized as “an authentic expression of the spontaneous missionary activity of the People of God” (EG 122).
These gestures and practices should never be dismissed as manifestations of natural religiosity: “No one who loves God’s holy people ” Pope Francis warned, “cannot see these as the expression of a purely human search for the divine. They are the manifestation of a theological life nourished by the working of the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts” (EG 125).

Messages to the PMS and for World Mission Day

Every year, Pope Francis has been able to express his missionary concern through the traditional Messages for World Mission Day (usually celebrated throughout the Church on the penultimate Sunday of October) and his addresses to the Pontifical Mission Societies on the occasion of their annual General Assembly. These speeches and messages have been used by Pope Francis to reiterate the guidelines of his missionary teaching, applying them to the circumstances of the moment and to the urgent needs faced by the universal Church. Thus, Pope Francis has had many opportunities to repeat to everyone (as he did, for example, when he met with the national directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies on June 1, 2018) that the protagonist and “author” of the Church's mission is “the Holy Spirit,” and that the book to be used for prayer by those who proclaim the name of Christ to the world is not some handbook for “giving soul” to missionary marketing strategies, but the small volume of the Acts of the Apostles. The simple story of the miracles worked by the Holy Spirit among the first friends of Jesus. We need to “go there to find inspiration. And the protagonist of that book,” he added at the time, “is the Holy Spirit.”

Thus, in his second-to-last Message for World Mission Day, released on February 2, 2024, the Pontiff recalled that the Second Vatican Council emphasized the “eschatological character of the Church's missionary commitment” when it recalled that “the period of missionary activity is situated between the first and second coming of Christ.” The first Christians, the Successor of Peter recalled in that message, “felt the urgency of proclaiming the Gospel.” So too today, Pope Francis emphasized, “it is important to keep this perspective in mind, because it helps us to evangelize with the joy of those who know that ‘the Lord is near.’”

Pope Francis' message to the Pontifical Mission Societies, released on May 21, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, had a unique impact. In that masterful text, in addition to repeating some key words from Evangelii gaudium, Pope Francis also offered insights and advice for those most deeply involved in the apostolic work entrusted to the Church. Among other things, he recalled that those who proclaim Jesus with their lives also follow him on the path of patience with which he “always accompanied people's steps of growth with mercy,” without “adding unnecessary burdens,” without “imposing sophisticated and laborious paths of formation to enjoy what the Lord gives with ease.” He recalled that Jesus met his first disciples while they were immersed in the reality of their lives, while they were busy with their work (“He did not meet them at a conference or a formation seminar”), to repeat that the mission does not need to “create parallel worlds” or “build media bubbles in which to echo one's own slogans.”

To the Pontifical Mission Societies, the network of charity and prayer at the service of missions throughout the world, the Pope also suggested that they value the special bond that unites them to the Successor of Peter, which can become “a support for freedom” and an aid in avoiding “passing fads, flattening of unilateral schools of thought, or cultural homologation of a neo-colonialist nature.”

In that text, Pope Francis also referred to certain “pathologies” that can distort the work of individuals and institutions involved in missionary activity, such as the “self-referentiality” of structures and figures within the Church who devote “energy and attention above all to self-promotion and the celebration of their own initiatives in a publicity-seeking manner.” Or the presumptuous dirigisme of groups and structures that view the multitude of the baptized as “an inert mass” to be revived and mobilized in order to bring them to “a ‘consciousness’ through reasoning, reminders, and teachings.” Or, again, the contagious abstraction of those who multiply “useless places for strategic elaboration” to “produce projects and guidelines that serve only as instruments of self-promotion for those who invent them.”

The book-interview on the mission

Immediately after October 2019, which was celebrated as “Extraordinary Missionary Month,” Pope Francis' book-length interview, “Without Him We Can Do Nothing: Being Missionaries Today in the World” (LEV-Edizioni San Paolo), was published. The Bishop of Rome himself presented it to the Superiors of the Roman Curia during the traditional Christmas greetings meeting, describing it as “the ‘document’, so to speak, that I wanted to produce for the extraordinary missionary month.” He added: “I was inspired by a phrase, I don't know by whom, which said that when a missionary arrives in a place, the Holy Spirit is already there waiting for him.”

In that little book, Pope Bergoglio had the opportunity to dwell on some of the phrases he most often used to suggest the dynamism proper to and the source of all apostolic work. These phrases, in some cases, risked being reduced to slogans of the new “conformism” of ecclesial language. “Church going forth,” Pope Francis explained, “is not a fashionable expression that I invented. It is the command of Jesus, who in the Gospel of Mark asks his disciples to go out into the whole world and preach the Gospel 'to every creature'. The Church is either outgoing or it is not the Church. It is either proclaiming or it is not the Church. If the Church does not go out, it becomes corrupt, it loses its nature, it becomes something else. It becomes a spiritual association. A multinational corporation for launching initiatives and religious messages'. He added: “The mission, the ‘Church going forth’, is not a program, an intention to be realized by an effort of will. It is Christ who brings the Church out of herself. In the mission of proclaiming the Gospel, you move because the Holy Spirit pushes you. And He leads you. And when you arrive, you realize that He has arrived before you and is waiting for you.”

In his book-length interview on mission, Pope Francis also explained his insistent call not to distort the Christian mission by assimilating it to a form of proselytism: “There is proselytism,” explained the Bishop of Rome, ‘wherever there is the idea of making the Church grow without the attraction of Christ and the work of the Spirit, relying solely on some kind of ’clever discourse.' So, first of all, proselytism cuts Christ himself and the Holy Spirit out of the mission, even when it claims to act in the name of Christ.” Proselytism, Pope Francis added, “cannot tolerate the freedom and gratuitousness with which faith can be transmitted, by grace, from person to person.”

Catechesis on “apostolic zeal”

In 2023, during the Wednesday General Audiences, Pope Francis wanted to hold a long series of catechesis dedicated to the “passion for evangelization, that is, apostolic zeal” (“an urgent and decisive theme of Christian life”), which marked his entire tenth year of pontificate. In this way, the Bishop of Rome wanted to take up and relaunch in all its resonances the “missionary” connotation that has marked the entire trajectory of his papal magisterium.

The cycle of catechesis on apostolic zeal unfolded before the crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square or in the Paul VI Hall as a long journey full of suggestions, ideas, reminders, personal stories, offered by Pope Francis to accompany everyone “in rediscovering the passion for evangelization” and to attest that the Christian faith is a “treasure” that “is received” and “passed on” to others just as it was received, without the desire to add anything else or to rely on “the strength of one's own ideas, programs, or structures.” In the second part of the catechesis cycle, the Successor of Peter also recalled the figures of the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, and many other “witnesses who rekindled in the Church a passion for the Gospel, so that they may help us to rekindle the fire that the Holy Spirit wants to keep burning in us.”

The “elective affinities” between Pope Francis and missionaries

During his 12 years as Pope, many missionaries felt a special closeness and connection with his personal Christian sensibility, as you can read in the missionary stories published by Fides.
Many missionaries felt close to and familiar with his calls to the “gray areas” of humanity where the Gospel is normally proclaimed, his invitations to get their hands dirty with reality as it is, to take life as it comes, with its imperfections and flaws, its miseries and failures, far from the perfectionist abstractions of rigorism of all kinds.

Many missionaries were happy to hear him preach that one should not have preconceived notions when seeking to save souls, and that adaptations aimed at “saving what can be saved” are always more effective than rigidly clinging to the purity of one's own ideological principles.

Many missionaries know from experience that “A small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties.” (Evangelii gaudium 44). Many missionaries also know from experience that those who proclaim the Gospel and wish to offer the gift of grace and healing through the sacraments of the Lord are sometimes called to choose a way of proceeding ” prudence, understanding, patience and docility to the Spirit,“ the willingness to listen, to walk step by step, and to ‘give time, with immense patience,’ because ‘As Blessed Peter Faber said: ’Time is God's messenger'” (EG 171).

For all this, and more, Pope Francis' “missionary teaching” will continue to be valuable for the Church's journey and times ahead. Where everyone will be able to treasure his words and memory, remembering that “in the Church, everything must be conformed to the demands of the proclamation of the Gospel; not to the opinions of conservatives or progressives, but to the fact that Jesus reaches the lives of people” (Pope Francis, catechesis from the General Audience of Wednesday, February 22, 2023).

(Fides Agency 24/4/2025)

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