THE CHURCH OF THE SHEAVES CONFERENCE - Listening the Continents: Gifts, Challenges and New Missionary Pathways

by Marie-Lucile Kubacki

Rome (Fides News Agency) – “From mission territories to missionary Churches”: the title of one of the sessions sums up the second day of the first international conference of “The Church of the Sheaves”, devoted to “Listening to the Continents”. The working groups of Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Latin America converged on one shift: moving beyond what the programme calls “a Church divided between permanent givers and permanent receivers”, in the spirit of Archbishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu, who opened the meeting by recalling that “every local Church has gifts to give and gifts to receive”.

Neither donors nor beneficiaries

Sr Agnès Sory, for the Africa group, set the tone: “No local Church is only a giver. No local Church is only a beneficiary.” The three verbs “Give – Receive – Send” “do not describe three successive stages, but three inseparable dimensions of missionary communion.” Africa, with its Fathers of the Church and early monastic traditions, did not begin giving today: “What is new is the scale and visibility of its contribution.” The group quoted Pope Leo XIV in Paris on 26 September: “No one is so poor that they have nothing to give; no one is so rich that they have nothing to receive.” Mission now circulates “from South to North, from South to South, from North to South, and also within each local Church”. As Archbishop Nwachukwu had warned, this is “not simply a reversal”: the aim, Sr Agnès said, is “moving beyond the logic of fixed roles”.

Partners, not objects

The Asian report recalls that the dialogue promoted by the the Federation of Asian Bishops'Conferences (FABC) regards Asia’s religions and cultures as “not objects of evangelization but rather partners for mission”. In remote areas of South-East Asia, encounters are “not of foreign missionaries giving while local communities only receive”, but marked by “reciprocity and mutual enrichment”. For the Africa group, “the availability of financial resources does not alone determine the value of a partner or a donation”. In Cameroon, a parish that received buckets of paint from another organized a collection to pay for its visitors’ return transport, so that no relationship be “reduced to donor and beneficiary”.
The Oceania contribution asks missionaries to “build partnerships between local Churches, facilitating reciprocal gifts rather than merely supplying personnel”. The Filipino Church, which chose the theme “Gifted to Give” for its quincentennial, reminds us that “a gift that is kept ceases to be a gift”. In Japan and other Countries, where Catholic communities are small and ageing, the Asian report calls for moving from assimilation to an intercultural identity in which “all members act as both hosts and guests”, while Filipino, Indian, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese and Korean Catholics bring to the global North their “dynamism, hospitality and their own local catholic traditions”. The European group, which sees migrants “revitalizing parishes”, likewise lists among its signs of hope “mutual learning between Churches of the Global South and Europe”.

The missionary is not a stopgap

The person sent is “neither a technical solution to a shortage of priests nor the representative of a supposedly superior culture”, the African report insists. Fr Cosmas Ajawara, a Nigerian Fidei Donum priest who served 23 years in Canada, brought an experience of the “Church as Family”, received a culture of safeguarding, financial responsibility and transparent administration, and is passing it on to his diocese of origin. In the United States, where a quarter of parish clergy are foreign-born, the bishops consulted expressed gratitude for international priests and religious, while admitting that fraternity between local and international clergy “still needs greater attention”. The European group also noted “misunderstandings between local and foreign clergy, especially regarding authority and collaboration with laypeople”. The US documentary will be titled “Many Members, Many Gifts, One Body in Christ”, while the Canadian one will focus on the gift of the newcomer in a Church of immigrants, where Sunday Mass is celebrated in some thirty languages in the Archdiocese of Toronto, and on Quebec, once a great sender of missionaries, now small but alive. Sr Agnès asked: “Are we willing to welcome others only for what they can do for us, or are we also ready to let ourselves be transformed by the gifts they bring?”

A partnership with truthful memory

Partnership requires naming past asymmetries. The Latin American report recalls an evangelization “inextricably linked to the colonial projects of both crowns” and a credibility crisis, opened by abuse, which “demands a process of restorative accompaniment for victims”. The Canadian documentary will open with the First Nations and reconciliation. For the European group, “safeguarding is a condition of belonging, not an administrative add-on”. Africa proposed a “mission without power”, its missionaries often arriving “without dominant political, economic or cultural support”, and warned against any romanticism: “Suffering is not a gift. Violence is not a gift. Poverty is not a gift.”

Gifts not to be idealized

"Recognizing gifts does not mean idealizing them," Sr Agnès warned. The vitality of the African Churches is real, but "numbers, vocations, and the fervour of celebrations do not tell the whole story". Likewise, the Church as Family "must not be idealized to the point of concealing the divisions, exclusions, or wounds" that run through communities. The mission of the widow's mite, the African report adds, "should neither sanctify poverty nor justify the unpreparedness of missionaries", for "crossing a border is not enough to make a mission". The team presenting Module 12, "Africa and Asia: Emerging Centers of Faith and Solidarity", saw four signs of vibrancy in these Churches: a once colonial Church now "coming of age", theologies more narrative than systematic, a strong sense of inclusivity, and a young Church. It also acknowledged patriarchy, hierarchy and clericalism, divergent views on moral issues, democratic backsliding, corruption and social injustice. It called for a "humble discernment" that neither rejects indigenous wisdom as primitive nor romanticizes it, recalling that "inculturation is never a superficial translation of vocabulary". It also warned that "externally funded peace projects without local ownership rarely survive the funding cycle". Drawing on the Cameroonian Jesuit Engelbert Mveng, it described Africa's deepest poverty as "anthropological": not merely financial, but the despoiling of identity, culture, voice and dignity left by slavery and colonialism. Filipino theologian Andrew Recepción, President of the International Association of Catholic Missiologists, urges that the rich intuitions of synodality be kept from hardening into slogans. Now that the word "has become a buzzword", he warns, it could turn into "an ecclesiastical cliché" or end in "synodal echo chambers" where "the same people all over again" talk among themselves, far from the poor and the marginalized. Without mission, synodality "is reduced to a human effort or simply a new pastoral approach", like the Filipino fiesta, which gathers "the whole town" at "one table", can "remain a celebration without a sending".

Partners within each Church

The same shift applies inside local Churches. The European group sees a Church becoming home when “those once treated as recipients become co-responsible participants”, for “hospitality without influence remains incomplete”: “coexistence alone is insufficient; mission requires encounter, shared worship and mutual transformation”. In Africa, catechists, women and young people sustain communities; the challenge is “to move from seeing people merely as beneficiaries toward recognising them as protagonists”, since “participation does not simply mean carrying out more tasks”. Agnes Brazal described the 17 mission stations opened in the poorest areas of Caloocan, in the Philippines, for migrants who are Catholic yet “unchurched”, and caste discrimination in India, where Dalits make up about 7% of bishops and 4% of priests. Filipino theologian Andrew Recepción warns against “synodal echo chambers” where the conversation ends among “the same people all over again”, while the subaltern voices “are elsewhere”. For him, “synodal formation is the passage from kami to tayo”, from the exclusive to the inclusive “we” of the Tagalog language; and the millions of Filipinos working abroad are missionaries in their own right: “No mission office sent them, yet by baptism they are missionary disciples.” The Latin American group called for greater participation of women and lay people “in the Church’s governing and decision-making structures”, drawing on the experience of “a Church close to the people (pueblo)” and of a hope “lived as an active virtue”. It plans a regional conference, possibly in August 2027, the year marking the twentieth anniversary of the Aparecida Conference. Fr Cosmas added that “the unity of faith does not require uniformity in its expressions”, citing the Keur Moussa monastery in Senegal and the Congolese rite.

In Europe, where Christianity “has become one subculture among many”, the group also saw signs of hope: over 21,000 adult and teenage baptisms in France in 2026, and young people attracted “not by watered-down Christianity, but by a bold, joyful, and demanding faith”. Practical concerns were also voiced: for example, one participant asked for texts that rural catechists can read. Regional consultations will follow, in Europe on 26–27 November and across Africa. Sr Agnès concluded: “We do not become missionary when we no longer need to receive. We become missionary when the gift received from God becomes, in turn, a gift shared.”

(Fides News Agency, 23/10/2026)

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