About Us

Welcome to the Office for the Missions, San Diego Diocese, where we promote and organize Missionary Childhood Association, Missionary Cooperation Plan, Mission Sunday, Mass Cards and Mass intentions that supply stipends for Priests here and in mission countries, Planned Giving opportunities, Monthly and Membership donors, and Bequests. We welcome visiting missionaries and help guide people who feel a call to Mission.

We are committed to creating an awareness of and promoting the support of World Mission within the communities of the Diocese of San Diego. Through Missionary Appeals, education programs, immersion programs and publicity in the diocesan newspaper, we endeavor to bring missionary work and needs to the attention of parishioners in parishes and youth in schools and religious education programs.

The Office for the Missions is the primary vehicle for the financial support of the Worldwide Mission of the Church through the Propagation of the Faith, Missionary Childhood Association and the Society for Peter the Apostle.

The activities of the Pontifical Mission Societies are carried out in the Diocese of San Diego through the Office for the Missions, and assists Catholics in San Diego to deepen their baptismal commitment in fulfilling their missionary responsibility. The Office for the Missions extends the care of the Diocese of San Diego to dioceses, communities and individuals serving the Church in mission lands by:

  • Providing direction and help to lay missionaries;
  • Soliciting funds for the work of the Pontifical Mission Societies and missionaries – clergy, religious and lay;
  • Facilitating the celebration of World Mission Sunday in October of each year;
  • Coordinating the Missionary Cooperation Plan, which enables missionaries to share their experiences directly with parishioners during the Sunday Liturgy;
  • Assisting those who choose to make periodic or monthly donations to support missionary work;
  • Confirming the worthiness of charities for those who wish to designate a gift to a specific missionary project or community;
  • Through the Missionary Childhood Association, invite young people to pray and to offer financial help so that children in the Missions today may know Christ and experience His love and care;
  • Visiting mission countries to learn first-hand the special needs of missionaries and the people;
  • Offering information and assisting those who wish to make a Bequest that supports missionary work.

All of these activities help unite the efforts of parishioners in the Diocese of San Diego with the world-wide Catholic effort to bring Christ to all nations and cultures.

This is how you can help

You can carry out your baptismal commitment to be a missionary by:

  • Giving witness to your love for Christ and His Church with your family, friends and everyday acquaintances;
  • Fostering a devotion to the missions among our children;
  • Developing a sincere appreciation for missionaries such as St. Therese of the Child Jesus and St. Francis Xavier, who offered their lives for the work of the missions;
  • Offering financial assistance to help support the material needs of mission lands and organizations;
  • Attending weekday Mass, joining your prayers and sufferings to the sufferings of Christ and participating more intimately in His mission to renew the face of the Earth.
  • Forming or joining missionary “circles of cooperation” sponsored by various missionary groups.

Do you wish to visit the Missions?

Contact the Office for the Missions or the Catholic Volunteer Network https://catholicvolunteernetwork.org/contact-us/, a “clearing-house” for lay volunteer missionaries. For more information about how you can help the work of the missions through the Pontifical Mission Societies,
contact:
Rev. Soney Sebastian, Director,
Office for the Missions,
PO Box 82386, San Diego, CA 92138-2386,
E-Mail: ssebastian@sdcatholic.org.

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