‘Children helping children’: Missionary Childhood Association helps youth become evangelists

Daniel Payne   By Daniel Payne for CNA

October 22, 2024 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 0 Print

 

 

Children participate in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ annual Missionary Childhood Association Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Oct. 16, 2024. / Credit: Archdiocese of Los Angeles

CNA Staff, Oct 22, 2024 / 12:25 pm (CNA).

A special Mass in Los Angeles last week celebrated the “missionary spirit” of children in the U.S., with hundreds of youth gathering to mark the efforts of the Missionary Childhood Association (MCA) and its work in turning children into champions of the faith.

The Los Angeles Missionary Childhood Association held its annual Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Oct. 16 “to honor the contributions of local youth in supporting underserved children worldwide,” the Archdiocese of Los Angeles said in a press release.

Children participate in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles' annual Missionary Childhood Association Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Oct. 16, 2024. Credit: Archdiocese of Los Angeles
Children participate in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ annual Missionary Childhood Association Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Oct. 16, 2024. Credit: Archdiocese of Los Angeles

The MCA, also known as the Pontifical Society of the Holy Childhood, is tasked with “developing a spirit and a missionary leadership” among children, one that “drives them to share the faith and material benefits, especially with children who are most in need.”

It is one of the four Pontifical Mission Societies, an umbrella group of Catholic missionary groups under the pope’s authority.

The MCA encourages children to “pray every day for the other children and for the spread of the Gospel message.” It also works to help children become evangelists and spread the Catholic faith.

Financial contributions, meanwhile, are collected by local and national chapters and sent to a universal fund at the Vatican “to be redistributed to millions of needy children in every corner of the world.”

Alixandra Holden, the director of the Missionary Childhood Association in the United States, told CNA the organization’s motto is “Children helping children.”

Father Frederick Byaruhanga preaches at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles' annual Missionary Childhood Association Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Oct. 16, 2024. Credit: Archdiocese of Los Angeles
Father Frederick Byaruhanga preaches at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ annual Missionary Childhood Association Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Oct. 16, 2024. Credit: Archdiocese of Los Angeles

The MCA works with diocesan mission offices, she said, to promote “parish education, material and prayerful support for the missions,” and other evangelization efforts. Every U.S. diocese has a mission office — though they may be called different names — and many promote the MCA’s work and help raise funds for its efforts.

“We’re tasked at the end of each Mass to go out and tell all nations,” Holden said. “We want to bring the stories of the Church to the children in our schools.”

The MCA’s primary task, she said, is “education” of the Catholic faith and of the need to help and serve disadvantaged children around the world.

“We want to show kids they still have the ability to help around the world, through their prayers and sacrifices,” she said.

The Los Angeles Archdiocese said this month that fundraisers over the past year raised $85,855.19 for the cause.

That money will go in part toward funding the Diocesan Center for Children Development and the Next Generation Home in Ghana, “where hundreds of children living in the streets are provided meals and education, and whenever possible, reintegration with their families,” the archdiocese said.

Children congregate at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles' annual Missionary Childhood Association Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Oct. 16, 2024. Credit: Archdiocese of Los Angeles
Children congregate at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ annual Missionary Childhood Association Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Oct. 16, 2024. Credit: Archdiocese of Los Angeles

On its website, meanwhile, the Pontifical Mission Societies points to MCA projects that include the repainting of a parish school in Chad, a poultry farming project in Zambia, and child faith formation efforts in Bangladesh, among others.

The roots of the association, Holden said, go back to the 19th century, when French Bishop Charles de Forbin-Janson consulted with Pauline Jaricot, the foundress of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, on how to inspire missionary zeal in children.

“For the last 200 years this has been growing into what it is today, which is really lived through the children of the U.S. and European countries,” Holden said.

At the center of the work is an effort to ensure children are both catechized in the faith and ready to follow the Christian mandate of service to others.

On the Vatican’s website, the organization says it promotes “children praying for children, children evangelizing children, children helping children worldwide.”

“We need to educate them on what their capabilities are,” Holden said, “and who is out there, and who our brothers and sisters are that we need to show love for.”

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Vatican at UN: Nukes won’t save us – let’s seek a better path

September 22, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

New York City, N.Y., Sep 22, 2017 / 08:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Nuclear weapons are a force for instability and any claims they promote peace are chasing illusions, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States told leading diplomats seeking a nuclear test ban treaty.

“While having no illusions about the challenges involved in achieving a world free of nuclear weapons, the challenges posed by the status quo ante of growing tensions, continuing proliferation, and new modernization programs are far more daunting,” Archbishop Paul Gallagher said.

“Nuclear arms offer a false sense of security. The uneasy peace promised by nuclear deterrence has time and time again proved a tragic illusion. Nuclear weapons cannot create a stable and secure world. Peace and international stability cannot be founded on mutually assured destruction or on the threat of annihilation.”

The U.K.-born archbishop’s words came in remarks to the 10th Conference on Facilitating Entry into Force of Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, held at the United Nations in New York City. The Holy See signed the treaty in 1996.

“The rising tensions over North Korea’s growing nuclear program are of special urgency,” he said. “The international community must respond by seeking to revive negotiations. The threat or use of military force have no place in countering proliferation, and the threat or use of nuclear weapons in countering nuclear proliferation are deplorable.”

“We must put behind us the nuclear threats, fear, military superiority, ideology, and unilateralism that drive proliferation and modernization efforts and are so reminiscent of the logic of the Cold War,” he said.

Putting the treaty into force is even more urgent considering contemporary threats to peace, he said, citing continued nuclear proliferation and some nuclear states’ major new modernization programs.

Archbishop Gallagher said political analysis that relies on nuclear weapons is misleading. The supposed peace based on a balance of power and “threats and counter-threats, and ultimately fear” is “unstable and false.” He called for the replacement of “a logic of fear and mistrust” with “an ethic of responsibility” that would foster multilateral dialogue and consistent cooperation between all members of the international community.

The archbishop said the Holy See is troubled by “the continued lack of progress” in making sure the treaty enters into force. The two decades since the treaty’s launch have been a lost two decades in achieving “our common goal of a world without nuclear weapons.”

The Holy See welcomes the opportunity to join other states that have ratified the treaty in appealing to remaining states whose ratification is necessary, he added.

“In ratifying this treaty, these States have an opportunity to demonstrate wisdom, courageous leadership, and a commitment to peace and the common good of all,” he said.

The comprehensive test ban is “a critical component to broader nuclear disarmament efforts.”

He cited Pope Francis’ Sept. 25, 2015 speech urging the U.N. General Assembly “to work for a world free of nuclear weapons” and for a full application of the Non-Proliferation Treaty that aims for “a complete prohibition of these weapons.”

“An ethics and a law based on the threat of mutual destruction – and possibly the destruction of all mankind – are self-contradictory and an affront to the entire framework of the United Nations, which would end up as ‘nations united by fear and distrust,” the Pope said.

Pope Francis has also written to Elayne Whyte Gómez, president of the U.N. conference seeking a nuclear weapons ban, urging the international community to go beyond nuclear deterrence and adopt “forward-looking strategies to promote the goal of peace and stability and to avoid short-sighted approaches to the problems surrounding national and international security.”

On Thursday, the Holy See was among the first to sign and ratify a new treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons. Archbishop Gallagher signed on behalf of the Holy See and Vatican City at the U.N. in New York, Vatican Radio reports. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Weapons has over 40 signatories and it will take effect 90 days after at least 50 nations formally ratify it.

That treaty bars the development, production, testing, acquisition, possession or stockpiling of nuclear weapons or other nuclear devices. It also bars the use or threat of use of these weapons. Most nuclear powers did not take part in the negotiations.

[…]

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