by Marie-Lucile Kubacki
Vatican City – Missionaries who once left their homes, unsure whether they would ever return, sowed seeds that have since borne fruit in local Churches across the world. How can those fruits now enrich the whole Church? This question lies at the heart of “The Church of the Sheaves,” an international initiative whose first public event will bring together Church leaders, scholars and pastoral workers in Rome from 22 to 24 October 2026.
The conference, entitled “A Church for All: Synodal in Method, Missionary in Spirit, Credible in Love,” will take place at the Pontifical Urbaniana University. It will explore mission as a reciprocal relationship, moving beyond a division between Churches that give and Churches that receive.
“The idea of the Church of the Sheaves has been inspired by Psalm 126, verse 6,” Archbishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu, Secretary of the Dicastery for Evangelization in the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches, explains in an interview with Fides News Agency.
The psalm evokes those who depart in tears, carrying seed to be sown, and return singing, bringing their sheaves.
For the Archbishop, this image recalls the experience of missionaries who left their families without the transport and communications available today, not knowing whether they would see their loved ones again. “For many, setting out was like dying,” he says. Their departure involved a sacrifice shared by those who remained behind.
Yet that departure is only one part of the story. “The big blessing is that what they sowed has now grown and has borne fruit,” Nwachukwu continues. “We are at the moment of gathering the sheaves and bringing the sheaves home.” The image thus links the memory of missionary sacrifice with the gifts that the Churches born of those efforts can now share.
This perspective also challenges a purely practical understanding of the presence of missionaries from the Global South in European and North American dioceses. Asked how their spiritual and pastoral heritage can be recognized, rather than treating them merely as an answer to declining priestly numbers, Nwachukwu rejects that limited approach.
“Globally, we really don’t have any shortage of priests. We have a redistribution of priests,” he argues. His emphasis is on recognizing these missionaries as bearers of the fruits of evangelization, rather than simply as personnel filling vacancies.
Such an exchange requires preparation on both sides. “We have to prepare the home for the bringing home of the sheaves,” the Archbishop explains. At the same time, “we also have to prepare the sheaves so that they will be suitable for the homes.” Welcoming communities and arriving missionaries alike are therefore part of the formative task.
The conference at the Urbaniana
Sponsored by the Dicastery for Evangelization, the initiative involves DePaul University’s Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, the Urbaniana’s Faculty of Missiology, and ecclesial and missionary partners across five continents.
Project co-directors Fr. Stan Chu Ilo and Fr. Jaeho Chung will present the initiative, while the symposium will include sessions devoted to the continents.
Monsignor Hyuntaek Han, head of the Office of the missionary Dicastery, and Father Antoine Pooda, a priest of the Diocese of Gaoua in Burkina Faso and professor at the Urbaniana University’s Faculty of Missiology, an expert in conflict management and social education, will also assist in moderating the sessions.
The sessions dedicated to the continents will be moderated by Gaetano Sabetta, professor of interreligious dialogue at the Urbaniana University’s Faculty of Missiology and consultant to the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue; Antonina Wozna, a theologian engaged in teaching and research at the universities of Wuppertal and Graz; and Sandra Arenas, dean of the Faculty of Religious Sciences and Philosophy at the Catholic University of Temuco in Chile, a specialist in ecclesiology, the Second Vatican Council, and ecumenism.
They will moderate the discussions on Europe and North America, Africa and Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, respectively.
A global formation program
The Rome gathering forms part of a programme extending through Pentecost 2028. Its planned resources include a fourteen-module online course, “Gift Exchange: The Church of the Sheaves,” five continent-specific documentaries, five volumes on pastoral theology, regional meetings and a podcast. Consultations with dioceses and religious congregations will address hospitality, belonging, exclusion and intercultural formation, grounding the project in pastoral experience.
For Archbishop Nwachukwu, the initiative does not suggest that mission belongs to a completed chapter of Church history. “The life of the Church is actually a life of mission,” he insists, “yesterday, today, tomorrow.” Gathering the sheaves means recognizing what missionary sacrifice has made possible—and opening the whole Church to the gifts that have grown from it.
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