Bishop Lucia’s Letter to the Faithful of The Diocese: World Mission Sunday 2026

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,Today, we celebrate World Mission Sunday, a powerful reminder of our shared responsibility to proclaim the Gospel to all nations. It is a day when Catholics around the world unite in prayer and solidarity to support the missionary work of the Church.

 We are all called to be a part of this mission work. In his last words before ascending to heaven, Jesus told us, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28: 19), and for 2,000 years the Church has been at work in this task. And we are far from finished! Two-thirds of the people alive – 5.5 out of 8.1 billion – still have no relationship with Christ or his Church. Bringing people to Jesus is the work of the Church, and all of us together have a part to play. Today, we have a singular means to do so: World Mission Sunday.

The second collection we take up on World Mission Sunday helps extend the Church’s missionary work to places where the Church barely exists, where the Gospel has never been heard before, and where the Church is too young, too persecuted, or too poor to sustain herself. On World Mission Sunday, we stand in solidarity with the missionaries, priests, religious sisters

and brothers, and lay leaders serving in the 1,130 mission dioceses – spanning Asia, Africa, Latin America, Oceania, and the Middle East – that depend on our prayers and financial support to continue proclaiming Christ and building His Church. The year’s World Mission Sunday celebration is unlike any other in our lifetime for two reasons.

First, this World Mission Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of its establishment by Pope Pius XI in 1926. This centenary is an opportunity to mark it with renewed missionary zeal. This year’s theme, “One in Christ, United in Mission,” chosen by Pope Leo XIV, invites us to rediscover the profound unity we share in Christ through baptism and how our baptismal identity overflows into the mission to bring others into communion with God and us.

Secondly, the beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen on September 24 reminds us of the importance of the missions. While many know him best for his TV presence, books, and charismatic eloquence, he repeatedly said, “My greatest love has always been for the missions of the Church.” For 16 years, as National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, he poured his talents into World Mission Sunday and distributed the proceeds diligently to the missions. We can surely count on his intercession for World Mission Sunday 2026.

Pope Leo XIV recognizes how important World Mission Sunday is for the Church. He spent a large part of his priestly ministry as a missionary in Peru, serving communities in the Andean highlands and rural villages, and has noted how dependent he was on the support of the Church universal through World Mission Sunday.

Last year, he became the first pope in history to record a short video that could be played before Mass, in which he appealed, “Please help me help missionaries everywhere.”  That’s what WorlMission Sunday does: to help Pope Leo care for the 1,130 missionary dioceses and territories under his supervision through the Dicastery for Evangelization.

Please respond to his appeal as generously as you can.

I am praying that World Mission Sunday will be a blessing for our diocese and help foster increased zeal for the missions within all of us. Let us pray together that the Holy Spirit will renew in us the fire of the early Church, that we might truly be One in Christ, United in Mission, and that we will grow in missionary awareness, solidarity, and responsibility.

Bishop Douglas J. Lucia,

Bishop of Syracuse