Burgos (EFE) | The presence of lay people among the Spanish missionaries is increasing, especially marriages, while Spain continues to be the country that contributes the largest number of missionaries to the world with some 6,300 and an average age of over seventy, half of whom are women and mostly religious or consecrated from many years ago.
These are data provided this Monday in Burgos by the director of Pontifical Mission Works (PMO), José María Calderón, secretary of the Episcopal Missions Commission.
The most recent figures include 6,370 Spanish missionaries, of which 1,177 are sent by dioceses and 5,193 by congregations, thus demonstrating the “very strong missionary concern” that has historically existed in Spain, Calderón stressed.
Most are religious or consecrated missionaries who have been there for many years but “the number of lay people and lay couples offering to go on mission is increasing,” he added.
“They win by a landslide”, affirmed the director of OMP, who regretted the lack of generational change, that more young people join, because the average age of the missionaries is over seventy years.
They persevere “until they can’t take it anymore”, he proudly pointed out, but young people “have to wake up”, he added at this point.
SPANISH WEEK OF MISSIOLOGY
For this reason, the Pontifical Mission Societies continues to organize the Spanish Week of Missiology, which is inaugurated this Monday in Burgos by the Archbishop, Mario Iceta, and with a lecture by Eloy Bueno de la Fuente, professor at the Burgos Faculty of Theology, who will tour for the 75 years of Missiology Week.
The appointment is dedicated on this occasion to women, “the great protagonist of the mission”, recalled the dean of the Faculty of Theology of Burgos, José Luis Barriocanal, and also the main protagonist of the ecclesial reality because they are the ones who They occupy “a prominent place” in the Catholic Church and, especially, in evangelization efforts.
The Spanish Week of Missiology will have seven conferences and two round tables that, except for the opening event, will be led by women.
There will be talk about women as witnesses to the resurrection of Christ, with the professor of the Comillas Pontifical University Elisa Estévez; of charity and the vocation of service with the Comboni missionary in Ethiopia, economist and theologian Laura Díaz; and of the holy women missionaries with Claire Mª Stubbemann, professor at the Burgos Faculty of Theology.
Nicole Ndongala, director of KARIBU, will analyze the need for women in the world, while the illustrator Patricia Trigo will reflect on the female commitment to evangelization in everyday life; and the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Emilce Cuda, on the future of the mission.
The conferences will be completed with two round tables with testimonies from missionary women, with Eva Maldonado, Pilar Serrano and Ximena Cabezas, as well as women committed to education and culture such as Rosa Requejo, from the San Pablo de Burgos Apostolic College; and María Eugenia Gómez (Complutense University).
To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Spanish Week of Missiology, a retrospective exhibition has been organized that can be visited in Burgos Cathedral during the month of July. EFE