by Father Lance P. Nadeau
Rome – If the Catholic world knows what is happening in the mission field today, we can thank one man and one remarkable vision. I’m speaking, of course, of my Maryknoll brother, Father John Considine, M.M., and the landmark news agency he founded, Fides Agency.
As we celebrate this World Mission Sunday, we would do well to take note!
Those who knew him will tell you that Father Considine had the heart of a missionary and the worn-out shoe leather of a reporter. He wanted nothing more than to share the Good News of our faith wherever and however he could. In 1927, just four years after his ordination, he established Fides, “to raise awareness of the missions to the People of God via the press.”
Father Considine would spend most of his life and ministry engaged in a unique mission, a kind of vocation within a vocation, heralding the Gospel through Fides’ stories in newspapers, magazines and leaflets shared with millions around the world.
Before there was a World Wide Web or anything remotely resembling the internet, there was Father John Considine and Fides, ensuring that the faithful were made aware of the remarkable work being undertaken by missionaries in far-flung corners of the world. As a result, nuns in Brooklyn, housewives in Boston, schoolchildren in Wisconsin and shopkeepers in Chicago learned of what was happening in small Catholic outposts in Hong Kong, Nairobi and New Delhi. Here was the universal church, coming into the homes of people everywhere!
I cannot help but think he would be excited and delighted at the tools we now have at our disposal – podcasts, blogs, livestreams, and all sorts of evangelization on social media. Father Considine blazed the trail for all of these efforts – and Fides is proudly and passionately continuing the great legacy he left behind.
As the agency prepares to mark its centenary next year, it’s noteworthy that the missionary mandate of the Catholic Church is gaining renewed attention. Just days ago, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who declared, “the world is my parish,” was beatified. And we now have a missionary pope, Leo XIV, who in his message for this 100th World Mission Sunday declared a recommitment “to the great work of evangelization, which is always a work of love.” It is a love that burned in the heart of Father Considine.
My prayer this Sunday is that we can continue to keep that flame, that love, enkindled, with the inspiration and closeness of the Holy Spirit and the great example of that devoted Maryknoll missioner, Father Considine to guide us. There are still so many great stories to tell!
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