Before reciting the Angelus yesterday in St. Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul II, noting that it was World Mission Day, invited “all believers to strengthen their own responsibility in announcing the Gospel to all peoples," with “prayer and concrete support,” and prayed for the gift of vocations to mission life.

"I wish to send very cordial greetings and express a profound thank-you to all missionaries committed to evangelization,” he said. “I would like to assure them of a special remembrance in my prayers.”

In a special way, I am thinking about all those who crowned their work of witnessing to Christ and serving mankind with the sacrifice of their lives," said the Holy Father, and he concluded with a prayer: "May Mary, the Queen of Missions, obtain the gift of many vocations to mission life everywhere in the Church."