Diocesan Missionary Vigil
Celebration of the ‘Redditio Symboli’ and ‘Missionary Mandate’ presided over by His Excellency the Archbishop (opening of the Cathedral at 7:40 p.m.)
8.45 p.m. – 10.30 p.m.
You can follow the celebration via live streaming on this website (www.duomomilano.it) on the Duomo Milano TV YouTube channel.
On the Eve of the diocesan celebration of World Mission Day (Sunday 26 October), priests, religious and lay people who make themselves available to proclaim the Gospel in sister churches around the world receive the Missionary Mandate from Archbishop Mario Delpini.
During the Vigil, 18-year-olds and young people are also invited to place their Rule of Life in the hands of the Archbishop.
As Pope Francis wrote in his message prepared for this occasion: «For World Mission Day in the Jubilee Year 2025, whose central message is hope, the motto Missionaries of Hope Among the Peoples has been chosen. It calls upon individual Christians and the Church, the community of the baptised, to their fundamental vocation of being, in the footsteps of Christ, messengers and builders of hope.
As we celebrate the first ordinary Jubilee of the Third Millennium after that of the year 2000, we keep our gaze fixed on Christ, who is the centre of history.
Through his disciples, sent to all peoples and mystically accompanied by him, the Lord Jesus continues his ministry of hope for humanity. Even today, he bends down over every person who is poor, afflicted, desperate and oppressed by evil, to pour ‘the oil of consolation and the wine of hope’ on their wounds.
Following Christ the Lord, Christians are called to spread the Good News by sharing the concrete conditions of life of those they encounter and thus becoming bearers and builders of hope. Indeed, ‘the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the people of today, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, are also the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Nothing genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts’ (Gaudium et spes, 1)».