Kike Figaredo, with the PMO in Cambodia: wheelchairs and new chapels in mission territory.
This Sunday, October 19, is the World Mission Day. Pontifical Mission Societies (PMO) raises funds to support the 1,131 mission territories of the Church.
The Spanish Jesuit missionary Kike Figaredo apostolic prefect of Battambang, Cambodia, explains :
It is a territory where 22 priests and 58 nuns take the faith to remote villages and attend to many victims of anti-personnel mines, a vestige of the war at the beginning of the century. About 4.5 million people live in Battambang, and almost all are Buddhists. There are about 5,000 Catholics. As in other missionary and poor territories, the help of the PMO is used to:
- ordinary expenses,
- construction of extraordinary projects, such as chapels and nurseries,
- support for people linked to the Church.
Figaredo met in Cambodia a Korean builder who was a convert and only wanted to build churches. "I discovered the Lord and he changed my life. Now I am another and I want the people of Cambodia to discover the Lord and his life to be changed," he said. "We have already built three chapels with him, in Cambodian style. They are beautiful chapels, clean, illuminated, and this is done by the PMO. No one else does it."
One of Figaredo's most prominent social works is his work with people with disabilities and those affected by anti-personnel mines. It has already delivered more than 60,000 wheelchairs."They transform lives, those of the people and mine. It gives me a new vision of things and helps me a lot," explained the veteran missionary.
José María Calderón, national director of Pontifical Mission Societies, recalled that "the Church that concerns me is not only my parish or my group, but the universal Church. And as a Christian I must feel united to all the apostolic and evangelizing work that it has in the world. Because they are important and it is part of my family, which is the Church."
"We don't just ask for economic collaboration. We also ask for collaboration with sacrifice and affection for missions and missionaries," Calderón explained.
OMP raised 64.3 million euros in 2024 worldwide
In 2024, the Universal Solidarity Fund of the Work of the Propagation of Faith raised 64.3 million euros.
Almost half of this Universal Solidarity Fund is allocated to ordinary aid for missionary dioceses, which are allocated to day-to-day expenses, simply so that the Church can remain open. The rest is allocated to extraordinary projects that the Mission Territories request each year.
Spain today has 9,648 missionaries, of which 5,624 are in their destination nations. The rest, 4,024, are in Spain for various reasons (training, missionary animation, health reasons ...). In Spain there are 377 missionary institutions, each with its own charisma and mode of service. The country that has the most Spanish missionaries has been Peru for decades: there are currently 524 Spanish missionaries there.
It must be taken into account that in just 15 years, the number of Spanish missionaries has dropped a lot. In 2010 the Church was still talking about 15,000 missionaries (4,500 religious and priests, 9,000 nuns, the rest lay people). Many, elderly, were dying or left the mission for health reasons.
Since the Church practically teaches that ALL are saved, what is the purpose of having missionaries, since all they spread is modernism. The missionary work of the TLM groups is spreading the Gospel and not liberation theology garbage.