Missionary Appeal 2025
Dear confreres,

A fraternal and warm greeting from the Sacro Cuore in Rome.

Today, 18 December, as is the case every year, in memory of
the foundation of our Congregation in 1859 I am addressing
this letter to you, renewing the spirit of our origins, the
missionary spirit that has made the Congregation what it is
from the beginning.

It is with emotion that I give voice to the heart of the
Congregation this year, on the 150th anniversary of the first
missionary expedition. The celebration of this anniversary
marks our heart and soul. It asks us to renew the missionary
spirit that has always been at the heart of the charism, so
that in thanking God for his fidelity, he may give future
energy to evangelisation and the Congregation.

Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Don Boscos first
missionary expedition is a great gift to:

Give thanks for, recognising Gods grace.
Gratitude makes the authorship of every beautiful achievement
clear. Without gratitude there is no capacity to welcome.
Every time we fail to recognise a gift in our personal and
institutional lives we seriously risk jeopardising it and
taking it over. In speaking of the spirit of mission we are
at the heart of the life of a disciple: something infinitely
greater than us, which is the founding and original dynamic of
the Church, for every generation.

Rethink, because nothing is forever.
Fidelity also involves the ability to change, in obedience, to
a perspective that comes from God and from reading the signs
of the times. Nothing is forever: from a personal and
institutional point of view, true fidelity is the ability to

change, recognising what the Lord calls each of us to.
Rethinking, then, becomes a productive act in which faith and
life come together; a moment in which to ask ourselves: what
do you want to tell us, Lord, with this person, with this
situation in the light of the signs of the times that ask that
we have the very heart of God to be able to interpret it?

Relaunch, starting over every day.
Gratitude leads to looking far ahead and welcoming new
challenges, relaunching missions with hope. Missionary
activity is bringing the hope of Christ with a lucid and clear
awareness linked to faith, which makes me recognise that what
I see and live is not my own, and gives me the strength to
move forward, personally and institutionally.

All this requires the courage to be oneself, to recognise
ones identity in the gift of God and to invest ones energies
in a precise responsibility. Aware that what has been
entrusted to us is not ours, and that we have the task of
passing it on to the next generations.

This is the heart of God; this is the life of the Church.

In recent times the Holy Father has given us the Encyclical
Letter Dilexit Nos on the human and Divine love of the heart
of Jesus Christ. This gift from Pope Francis enlightens our
missionary heart.

The Pope shows us social action and the whole world as a
natural destination of authentic devotion to the Sacred Heart.
In number 205 of the Encyclical he says: What kind of worship
would we give to Christ if we were to rest content with an
individual relationship with him and show no interest in
relieving the sufferings of others or helping them to live a
better life? Would it please the heart that so loved us, if we
were to bask in a private religious experience while ignoring
its implications for the society in which we live?

Pope Francis tells us clearly that those who are intimate with

the Lords heart cannot but be endowed with a missionary
spirit that embraces the whole world, because their heart has
expanded, widened! There is a direct relationship: the more we
inhabit the intimacy of the Heart of Christ, the more we will
be able to reach the most distant corners of the earth.

The heart of Christ urges me to be attentive to the wounds of
humanitys heart In a word: the heart of the mission is the
heart of God.

What strength and energy the Holy Father is passing on to us
in this year that introduces us to the 150th anniversary of
the first missionary expedition!

The story continues with us. Today Don Bosco needs Salesians
who make themselves available as simple tools to realise the
missionary dream. This is my appeal to the confreres who feel
the call of God in the depths of their heart within our common
Salesian vocation, to make themselves available as
missionaries with a lifelong commitment (ad vitam) wherever
the Rector Major will send them.

48 Salesians replied to Father Angels last appeal in December
2023, and 24 were chosen as members of the 155th missionary
expedition. In this year of preparation for the 150th of the
first missionary expedition, my prayer and my hope is that
there can be even more.

Discussion with the General Councillor for the Missions and
reflection shared within the General Council on the basis of
the missionary project presented to the Council (AGC 437, p.
66) allows me to specify the urgent needs identified for 2025,
where I would like a significant number of confreres to be
sent:
North Africa, Southern Africa (AFM), North West Africa
(AON), Mozambique;
the new presence that we will start in Vanuatu;
Albania, Romania, for the Calabria-Basilicata Project

(IME);
Chile, Mongolia, Uruguay, and other frontiers and any other
urgent needs.

I invite Provincials, and with them the Provincial Delegates
for mission animation, to be the first to help the confreres
to facilitate their discernment, inviting them, after
discussion with them personally, to make themselves available
to the Rector Major to respond to the missionary needs of the
Congregation. Then the General Councillor for the Missions
will continue the discernment that will lead to the choice of
missionaries for the next and 156th missionary expedition,
which will be held in Valdocco on 11 November 2025.

May the Lord bless us and may Our Lady accompany all of us. A
blessed Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year in the name
of Hope, which is the presence of God.

Rome, 18 December 2024

Fr. Stefano Martoglio
Vicar (ex. art. 143 cost. S.D.B.)
Prot. n. 24/0575