by Laura Gómez Ruiz
Sonsón – Reaching some of the communities served by the Apostolic Vicariate of Mitú, in the Colombian Amazon, means travelling along rivers, crossing the forest and covering long distances across a territory with few communication routes.
In the department of Vaupés, one of Colombia’s largest and most complex regions, numerous Indigenous peoples preserve their own languages, traditions and forms of social organization. In this context, distances also shape the pastoral care available to local communities. Being present, listening and sharing in people’s daily lives therefore take on particular meaning as expressions of evangelization. It was in this context that, last June, 54 missionaries from the Diocese of Sonsón-Rionegro took part in a mission experience shared with a sister community.
They did not set out simply to organize pastoral activities. “We could have thought we were going there to carry out a mission. As the days went by, we realized that, in fact, we were there to experience an encounter,” Father Renzo Baltazar Martínez Ramírez told Fides. He is the episcopal delegate for missionary pastoral care and director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the Diocese of Sonsón-Rionegro, in Antioquia, Colombia.
The experience marked the first in-person mission undertaken as part of the twinning initiative between Sonsón-Rionegro and the Apostolic Vicariate of Mitú. The 54 missionaries – priests, women religious and lay people – were sent to communities belonging to the parishes of the Cathedral of Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Fatima and St Paul the Apostle, as well as the quasi-parish of St Laura Montoya. During their stay, they visited families, met children and young people, accompanied the sick, celebrated liturgies, held catechetical sessions and created opportunities for community listening and dialogue.
The aim was to begin giving concrete expression to a relationship between Churches eager to get to know one another, share their experiences and embrace their missionary responsibility together.
The fruits of those days cannot be measured solely by the activities carried out. As Father Renzo explains: “When we think about going on a mission, we run the risk of asking ourselves first of all what we are going to bring. But when we realize that we are going to meet a sister community, the first question changes: what are we coming to receive?”
Mission as an exchange of gifts
Mitú lies in an Amazonian region marked by great cultural diversity and by the challenges posed by long distances and the conformation of the territory. The Church’s presence in the area has a missionary history spanning more than a century and has developed in close contact with Indigenous communities.
The twinning of particular Churches seeks precisely to ensure that this relationship does not remain limited to occasional initiatives, but becomes a journey of mutual understanding, collaboration and shared missionary responsibility.
For those who travelled from Antioquia, this reality raised a question that became one of the keys to understanding the experience: “Who is evangelizing whom?” Father Renzo explains: “We can arrive in a community thinking that we are the ones bringing the Gospel. But the Gospel was there before us. God was already there.” This is not merely a rhetorical question. It means recognizing, he says, that missionaries themselves also need to be evangelized: “They must allow themselves to be surprised. They must recognize that there are ways of living the faith that can challenge them.”
The encounter thus made it possible to move beyond a vision of missionary cooperation understood solely in terms of assistance. A Church, Father Renzo observes, “may need missionaries and, at the same time, be a teacher of mission in its own right. It may receive help and offer hope. It may ask for resources and give witness through its own life.”
Alongside the question, “What can we do for Mitú?” another question emerged: “What can Mitú teach us?” For the priest, it is when these two questions meet that cooperation begins to become communion.
Listening before speaking
One of the first lessons of the mission was the importance of learning to listen: to the history of the communities, to those engaged in pastoral ministry in the Vicariate – priests, religious, pastoral workers and leaders – and to Indigenous peoples themselves. “Listening does not simply mean gathering information. It means recognizing that God can speak to us through others,” he explains.
Among the missionaries’ most vivid memories is their encounter in the ‘Maloca’, a large house which, depending on the Indigenous people and their traditions, serves as a place for community gatherings, celebrations and the transmission of knowledge. Sharing food in this setting enabled the visitors to discover the importance of the table as a place of encounter and community. Drawing on their own Christian experience, they were also able to relate this to the ‘Eucharistic table’.
In this context, the term “Eucharisticizing” took on a special meaning. Father Renzo uses it to express the call to translate into daily life what is celebrated in the Eucharist: to make one’s very existence a gift for others.
“The Eucharist brings us together, but it also sets us on a journey. It makes us one, so that we may be sent out to others,” the priest explains.
The motto chosen for the mission, “With Jesus, let us row together towards the fullness of life”, expresses precisely this vision. Rowing requires coordination, patience, commitment and a shared sense of direction. “We do not row simply because we have a pastoral project. We row because He gathers us together and sends us forth,” he says.
The Amazonian Experience and the ‘ordinary’ horizon of mission
The mission did not come to an end when the missionaries returned to Antioquia. The experience prompted them to look at their own local Church.
“After looking at the distances in Mitú, we had to look at our own,” Father Renzo acknowledges. Who are the people living nearby whom they have yet to meet? Who lives on the outskirts of their parishes? Who are physically close but pastorally distant? “Those who travel far away learn to see differently those who are close to them,” he says.
For the priest, the challenge now is to ensure that the questions raised during the mission do not remain confined to personal reflection, but help reshape the way the diocese lives out its evangelizing mission.
The experience has taken on a special meaning for the Diocese of Sonsón-Rionegro, which has chosen as its pastoral vision for 2026–2030 a synodal Church rooted in communion, participation and mission. The encounter with Mitú enabled the diocese to walk alongside another Church, listen to it, share its own gifts and recognize what that Church, in turn, has to offer.
For this reason, Father Renzo observes, “returning home does not mean bringing things to a close. The challenge is to ensure that the mission does not become merely a memory, but develops into a process capable of bearing fruit” within the community that sent the missionaries.
A Journey that continues
The experience in Mitú forms part of a broader initiative of missionary cooperation among particular Churches in Colombia. For Sonsón-Rionegro, the next milestone will be the DOMUND Centenary Congress, which the diocese will hold from 16 to 18 October 2026 in La Ceja del Tambo, under the theme “One in Christ, United in Mission”.
In the wake of the experience in Mitú, these words have acquired a tangible meaning for the missionaries. Unity among Churches is built not only through documents or projects, but by walking together, listening to one another and recognizing that every Church has something to receive and something to offer.
“We set out thinking we had something to give. We returned having discovered how much we had received,” Father Renzo concludes.
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