Address to Families of Spanish Missionaries in Latin America

On Wednesday, 10 October 1984, in the Basilica of the Virgin of Pilar (Zaragoza), the Holy Father addressed the families of Spanish missionaries working in Latin America.

 Dear fathers, mothers and brothers of missionaries who work in Latin America!

It is a source of great joy for me to have this personal meeting with you right here, at the foot of the Most Holy Virgin of Pilar.

We prayed together for your children, brothers or family members who, following the call of the Lord, left their native land and went to bring the seed of the Gospel to the American continent. The day after tomorrow I will inaugurate in the Dominican Republic the preparatory acts of the fifth centenary of the evangelization of America.

As Pastor of the universal Church, I would like to thank deeply for the generosity with which, uninterruptedly, over almost five centuries, so many families have given the Church their sons and daughters to bring the light of Christ to the peoples of the New World.

“As beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger of happy proclamations that announces peace, a messenger of good that proclaims salvation,” we read from the prophet Isaiah (Is 52:7). Your sons, your daughters and your brothers, dear parents and family members of the missionaries, are these messengers of peace, love, salvation of which the prophet speaks.

Thank you for the name of the Church! Thanks to those Spanish families who in the first forty years of the discovery of the New World sent almost three thousand religious and about four hundred priests to those lands! Thank you because, in these five centuries, more than two hundred thousand Spanish missionaries went to serve the Church in Latin America!

Continue to support with your prayers, with your support and affection the servants of the Gospel who bear witness to the love of Christ by putting themselves at the service of their brothers and sisters. Spanish families: be proud and proud! And continue to cultivate the missionary spirit.

To you, young people, before the Patroness of the Hispaldidad, I say, as I already told Javier: “Youth, Christ needs you and calls you to help millions of your brothers to be fully men and to be saved. Open your heart to Christ, to his law of love, without laying conditions for your availability, without fear of definitive answers, so that love and friendship never set.” (Ioannis Pauli PP. II, Allocutio ad missionarios in urbe ‘Javier’ habita, 8, die 6 Nov. 1982: : Teachings of John Paul II, V/3 [1982] 1174).

May the Blessed Virgin of Pilar, in whose hands as Mother we place all our intentions, protect you, fathers, fathers and brothers of missionaries, and the Holy Spirit continues to arouse numerous vocations.

With great affection I give to you, to your children and to your family, as well as to all the Spanish missionaries, an apostolic blessing, in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

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