As Fr Guillermo Basañes, Councillor General for the Salesian Missions, has said there is a specific focus on Latin America this year for three reasons. The first is to preserve the historical memory. It is important that the younger generations of Salesians rediscover the beginnings of our missionary history and study the experience of these pioneers and the diversity of their methods of evangelization.
Second, it is a way to promote Salesian youth volunteering, which particularly involves young lay people in various initiatives to go to the indigenous communities of the American regions.
Finally, it serves to stimulate missionary vocations ad gentes. Many of these indigenous people would not have been saved and would no longer exist if it were not for the young Salesians who gave to their last breath for them.
Salesian Missions Day is meant to help the entire Salesian Family to know about the missionary commitment of the Congregation, to open their eyes to new missionary situations and to overcome every temptation to remain closed in their own context, and to remember the universal outreach of the Salesian charism.
The Rector Major adds that it is necessary to make the whole Salesian Family enthusiastic in zeal for the evangelization of the young and of all people, through the First Proclamation of Jesus, because the Salesian Family has been missionary from the beginning and it cannot be otherwise.
As usual, this year’s Salesian Mission Day is accompanied by various publications, such as the posters, that encourage the understanding, dissemination and implementation of our missionary work.
A video in which Fr Martín Lasarte from the Sector for the Missions speaks about the significance of the day is currently available on ANSChannel. In the coming weeks a video will be released that will show some missionary experiences among the indigenous peoples of Latin America.
