The carnival, usually held in May, was moved to October this year, a shift that meant it coincided with Catholic Mission’s annual Socktober schools engagement initiative.
Pope Francis, in his 2022 World Mission Sunday Message, invites everyone to answer the call to be missionary, sharing that “Mission is carried out together, not individually…”.
Socktober cultivates the passion of students, engages their local community, and takes action against poverty through the world game of soccer. It challenges students and their families to kick goals for good.
Catholic Mission is currently supporting a range of mission development programs in Ethiopia addressing malnutrition, the lack of access to education for young children, and the vulnerable position of women in society.
Catholic Mission is launching its Workplace Giving campaign, “Together, we can reach out and give life”, to promote supporting mission programs through payroll deductions.
They make up less than two per cent of the population but run more than 430 schools, most of them in poor, regional areas: the head of the Ethiopian Catholic Church, Cardinal Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel, says it is support from Catholics in places such as Australia that makes a brighter future possible.
Foundress of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, known in Australia as Catholic Mission, Pauline Jaricot was declared Venerable on 25 February 1963, by Saint John XXIII. Her beatification will occur during year marking the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.
Recognising that humans are hard-wired to be kind particularly during difficult times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Catholic Mission Conference speaker Hugh Mackay posed, Will there be a culture shift at having lived through this pandemic?
Given the year the world has endured with the pandemic, Catholic Mission’s 2020 Christmas Reflection event titled ‘the slave is my sister, the slave is my brother’ drew on the darker yet hope-giving side of the Christmas narrative, focussing on the experience of those who are marginalised, oppressed and vulnerable in the world today.
A global awareness campaign has been launched by Catholic Mission as part of World Mission Month, inspired by words from Pope Francis.