by Marie-Lucile Kubacki
Rome – “Your presence, drawn from different Churches, cultures, and pastoral contexts, already expresses the fundamental truth – the truth that the mission of the Church belongs to all of us, and no local Church can fulfil it alone, and none should be left out.” With these words, Archbishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu, Secretary of the Dicastery for Evangelization, opened the first international conference of “The Church of the Sheaves” at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome on 22 October 2026.
The three-day meeting, entitled “A Church for All: Synodal in Method, Missionary in Spirit, Credible in Love”, brings together Church leaders, scholars and pastoral workers from five continents. It is the first public event of a wider programme – sponsored by the Dicastery for Evangelization in partnership with the Urbaniana’s Faculty of Missiology, DePaul University’s Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, under the co-direction of Fr. Stan Chu Ilo and Fr. Jaeho Chung – which extends through Pentecost 2028 and includes a fourteen-module online course, documentaries, publications, regional meetings and a podcast.
The name of the initiative comes from Psalm 126, the psalm of those who sow in tears and return home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves. Countless missionaries, Archbishop Nwachukwu recalled, left their homelands, “often at a young age”, “crossed oceans and cultures, and went forth without knowing whether they would return”, sowing the Gospel far from home. Today, he noted, the fruits of that sowing are visible “particularly in Africa, in Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean, and in Latin America”: “communities alive in faith, new vocations, and gifts that can enrich the whole Body of Christ”.
Gratitude, however, “must be accompanied by truthful memory”. The Church must “neither romanticize the history of mission, nor reduce it to its failures”: “We have had successes – great successes – in the past; but we also have failures… we are not even today able to avoid failures, and it would be a mistake to reduce our mission to its failures.” There were times, he acknowledged, “when local cultures were not adequately respected, when abuses occurred, and when missionary activity became entangled with colonial power”: these wounds, he said, must be acknowledged honestly, and the Church must “learn from them with humility”, while honouring the missionaries who “gave themselves generously to the Gospel”.
An exchange of gifts that renews the Church
The heart of Archbishop Nwachukwu’s address was reciprocity. “Today, local Churches that once received missionaries are also sending them”, becoming “missionary Churches in their own right”. Yet “this is not simply a reversal in which yesterday’s receivers become today’s givers. It is an invitation to move beyond a model of mission that flows in only one direction. Every local Church has gifts to give and gifts to receive.” The Church of the Sheaves, he stressed, is about a “genuine exchange of gifts through which the whole Church is renewed”, not merely about the movement of personnel.
In practice, receiving a missionary means welcoming “a brother or sister” and helping them understand the language, history and pastoral realities of the community. “They arrive not only with needs; they arrive also with gifts: the gifts of their faith, their experience of God, and the fruits of the Churches that formed them. Missionaries, in turn, must listen, learn, and serve with humility.” Sending Churches, he said, must provide sound human, spiritual, cultural and pastoral formation, while receiving Churches must offer accompaniment and genuine opportunities for integration: both “share responsibility for fruitful mission”.
This vision responds to a world marked by migration, cultural pluralism, inequality and distance. Pope Leo XIV, the Archbishop said, “has reminded us that the Church is called to build bridges among peoples and cultures”, offering hospitality, solidarity and compassion particularly to migrants and those on the peripheries; in continuity with Pope Francis’ culture of encounter, “we must listen before speaking and understand before judging”. Recalling Genesis, he insisted: “All of us, the image and likeness of God.”
The Church of the Sheaves, he added, belongs “within the horizon of synodality”, and he recalled Pope Francis’ three terms: communion, mission and participation. “Synodality does not demand uniformity or the erasure of differences.” Linking the Greek roots of the word – syn-odos, “together on the way” – with ex-odos, he observed that to walk together is to set out, asking: “What is our exodus? Where are we coming from?”
“Run together”, like the two Apostles towards the tomb
Returning to what he called “that Easter morning sprint”, Archbishop Nwachukwu recalled how the Gospel tells us that Peter and John “ran together”: one ran faster, but “arriving first did not make his journey more important than the others'”. In his reading, Mary Magdalene was the third runner, “running silent” – and quite often, he said, those who run behind the scenes “are the ones that meet Christ first and receive the message”. “We are not asked to be identical, but to journey together.”
He expressed the hope that the conference will form pastoral agents marked by intercultural humility, strengthen ties between sending and receiving Churches, and help parishes and dioceses respond to migration, cultural diversity and “new digital spaces where people seek meaning and community”.
Recalling Ephesians 2:19 – “You are no more strangers, but fellow citizens and members of the same household of God” – he said the question was not simply “What can one Church offer another?” but also: “are we ready to receive one another’s gifts with gratitude, humility, and trust?”
Archbishop Nwachukwu concluded with an invocation to Mary, “the first missionary after Jesus Christ”, who carried Christ to Elizabeth with haste and humility, he greeted the participants with a final wordplay: “welcome to the Church of the Sheaves – and also, don’t forget, the Church of the Seeds.”
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