by Paolo Affatato
Rome – This year, Father James Bhola Lengarin, Superior General of the Consolata Missionaries, will celebrate World Mission Sunday in a place of profound symbolic value: Ethiopia, the country that St Joseph Allamano, founder of his religious institute, described as “a great missionary dream”. “I will celebrate the centenary of World Mission Sunday in Ethiopia, together with our missionaries and the local communities,” he tells Fides News Agency. He will be there for a canonical visit, but his presence carries a significance that goes beyond institutional commitments. “Ethiopia is particularly significant,” he explains. “Allamano was never able to travel there himself, but he longed to reach the Ethiopian people and continue the work of evangelization begun by Cardinal Guglielmo Massaia. Celebrating the centenary of WMS there,” Lengarin says, “will be an opportunity for us to give thanks for the journey we have made so far, to listen to the realities of the present and to renew our commitment to the mission of the future.”
Father Lengarin, a 55-year-old Kenyan priest, was elected Superior General of the Institute of the Consolata Missionaries on 12 June 2023, during the 14th General Chapter. He is the first African to lead the Institute. Over the course of his ministry, he has held various pastoral positions in Kenya, including Radio Waumini in Nairobi and at the Consolata Shrine. He also served as Regional Superior and, from 2017 to 2023, as Vice-Superior General.
In Africa, specifically in a land long desired by Allamano, the first African to lead the Consolata Missionaries celebrates the centenary of World Mission Sunday in the spirit expressed by Pope Leo XIV in his message for World Mission Sunday, “One in Christ, United in Mission”. Lengarin sees this centenary “not as a simple anniversary, but as an invitation to communion, shared responsibility and renewed missionary momentum”.
For Father Lengarin, the hundred-year history of World Mission Sunday tells the story of a profound transformation in the Church’s missionary awareness. “We have moved,” he observes, “from seeing mission as a movement from a few Christian countries towards distant lands to a deeper understanding that the whole Church is missionary and that every baptized person is a missionary disciple.”
The Second Vatican Council, the growth of local Churches, the increasing role of the laity, and ecumenical and interreligious dialogue have progressively reshaped the geography of mission. “Today, there are no longer just countries that send and countries that receive: everyone gives and everyone receives.” For this reason, the centenary “is not simply an occasion for remembrance, but a call to a new missionary era”.
The meaning of the expression “ad gentes”, he notes, has also broadened. It no longer refers solely to travelling to another continent or going among non-Christian peoples, but to “going out of ourselves, beyond our own culture and certainties, to encounter peoples, contexts and individuals where the Gospel is unknown or is no longer perceived as good news”.
Distance, explains the Superior General of the Consolata Missionaries, may be geographical, but it can also be “human, cultural, religious or existential”. This perspective preserves the Institute’s charism in its entirety: reaching the poorest and most vulnerable, reaching migrants and the realities where the Church’s presence is most fragile.
This understanding also gives rise to a renewed vision of the “new missionary peripheries”. These include “areas scarred by war, migration routes and refugee camps, Indigenous peoples and forgotten minorities, communities affected by environmental crises, as well as major cities marked by loneliness, inequality and a loss of meaning”.
There is also the “digital continent”, where many young people “no longer encounter a form of ecclesial language they can understand”. In these places, Lengarin observes, even when explicit proclamation is not possible, “the Gospel is witnessed through the humble, respectful and faithful presence of missionaries”.
Mission, then, begins with listening. “It starts with listening, sharing in people’s lives, serving without discrimination and allowing ourselves, too, to be evangelized by those we meet,” he explains. The works of charity that accompany this listening in missionaries’ lives “are neither a strategy for leading to the proclamation of the Gospel nor a substitute for it: they are a manifestation of God’s love”.
When there is trust and the other person asks “the reason for our hope”, he says, “then it becomes possible to speak with simplicity and with faith”. The aim is to foster “paths of consolation, justice, peace and hope”.
Interreligious dialogue also belongs within this vision. For Lengarin, it “belongs to mission, because evangelizing does not mean ‘conquering’, but bearing witness to Christ with respect and truth”.
“Dialogue does not mean renouncing one’s identity, but living it without fear, recognizing the seeds of goodness that the Spirit awakens in people and in different religious traditions,” he explains. In the missionary work of the Consolata religious, this dialogue takes concrete form in collaboration for peace, education, care for the sick, the defence of human dignity and friendship with people of other faiths. “The dialogue of life,” he stresses, “often precedes theological dialogue and makes it credible.”
Mission today, he observes, “is increasingly circular”. Churches with an ancient Christian tradition now receive missionaries from Africa, Asia and Latin America. “This obliges us to move beyond the idea that some Churches are always the teachers and others always the recipients,” he notes.
“Missionaries from the Global South bring a young and vibrant faith, new pastoral sensibilities and a cultural richness that can also transform the Churches that welcome them. What matters,” Lengarin says, “is not where we come from, but to whom we are sent and how we can serve together.”
This reciprocity also involves the laity. Shared responsibility, the Superior General observes, “does not arise simply from the need for more volunteers; it arises from Baptism”. “The laity,” he explains, “are not merely collaborators of the clergy or religious, but protagonists of mission in the family, at work, in culture, politics and the economy. They must therefore be involved in discernment and decision-making, as well as in spiritual and missionary formation, recognizing the gifts of women, men and young people. We must think, decide and act together.”
The missionary journey ultimately depends on communion. Referring to Pope Leo XIV’s message for the centenary of World Mission Sunday, Lengarin emphasises that “the Church’s first responsibility is to keep spiritual and fraternal unity alive”. He adds: “Communion is both the source and the fruit of mission.”
When conflict, polarization and mistrust prevail, witness loses its strength. This is particularly important in the Consolata Missionaries’ international communities, where “unity does not mean uniformity. It grows out of common prayer, the Eucharist, patient listening, fraternal correction and a willingness to understand different languages, sensibilities and ways of life. When welcomed as a gift, cultural differences can become a prophetic witness: people from different backgrounds can form one family in Christ and one missionary community.”
Where, then, does the strength to keep setting out on mission come from?
“Love is the very substance of mission,” Lengarin replies, once again referring to the Pope’s message for World Mission Sunday. “Our daily source of strength is union with Christ through the Word, the Eucharist, prayer and fraternity. In the spirituality of the Consolata Missionaries, the Eucharist is the source and summit of evangelization. But strength also comes from the poor, in whom Christ makes himself present, and from the silent presence of Mary Consolata.”
“In difficult moments,” he adds, “we return to an essential awareness: we are not the ones who save the world. Missionaries are called to remain alongside people faithfully, allowing God’s love to work through small, concrete and persevering acts.”
For young people, as World Mission Sunday marks its centenary, Lengarin offers a simple yet powerful invitation: “Rise up.”
“Rise up from indifference, from the fear of making mistakes and from the idea that your life should be built solely around yourself.” Mission does not begin when someone leaves for another continent, but when they allow themselves to be touched by the life of Christ.
“Do not be afraid,” he tells young people, “to ask God big questions and to allow yourselves to be challenged. The world needs your courage, your creativity and your ability to build relationships.” Those who do not feel a particular missionary restlessness can begin by drawing closer to others. “Encounter opens up paths we had never forseen.”
The first African to lead the Consolata Missionaries arrives in Ethiopia carrying in his heart the conviction that mission remains, above all, a movement of stepping outside oneself to encounter others. The land long dreamed of by the Institute’s founder now also becomes a place from which to reflect on a mission that has changed over the course of a century, yet retains its essential core: the gift of the Gospel of Christ to the world.
Today, the Institute of the Consolata Missionaries numbers 948 missionaries working across four continents and in 33 countries: 613 in Africa, 203 in Europe, 125 in the Americas and seven in Asia. Among them are 680 priests, 26 brothers, 15 bishops and 228 professed students.
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