Vatican City, Jun 3, 2017 / 10:23 am
On Saturday Pope Francis agreed to dedicate the month of October 2019 to reflection and prayer for the missionary work of the Church.
"To renew the ardor and passion, the spiritual engine of the apostolic activity of innumerable saints and missionary martyrs, I very much welcomed your proposal… to announce an extraordinary time of prayer and reflection on the Ad gentes mission," Pope Francis said during a meeting with members of the Pontifical Mission Societies.
Directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies and Cardinal Fernando Filoni, head of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, met with the Pope at 11 a.m. on June in the Vatican's Clementine Hall.
The Pope made the announcement for the extraordinary month based on a proposal by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, to dedicate time to pray and reflect on Ad gentes, a Second Vatican Council decree on the missionary activity of the Church, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on Dec. 7, 1965.