Fr Samir, as National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Colombia, how does your national context influence the way you understand and live out mission today?
Our Colombian context deeply shapes the way we conceive and live mission. Colombia is a country of contrasts, with enormous cultural, spiritual, and ecological richness, but also scarred by violence, structural poverty, and the exclusion of many communities. This challenges us to carry out a deeply incarnated mission.
Mission in Colombia calls us to walk with and accompany communities that live their faith with admirable strength: displaced persons, young people searching for meaning, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples, the elderly, the sick, children, adolescents, families. In this complex reality, we understand that proclaiming the Gospel is not just about preaching with words, but with gestures of reconciliation, committed presence, active hope, and the pursuit of peace.
Mission is the beating heart of a Church that journeys with its people and opens itself, from within its reality, to the universal mission. I can affirm that the Colombian people have a deep thirst for God and an immense capacity for solidarity. We live mission from a Church that accompanies, listens, draws near, and lives with and among the people.
Pope Francis’ message for World Mission Day 2025 invites us to be “Missionaries of hope among peoples.” What does this theme mean to you personally, and to the communities you accompany?
Pope Francis’ call to be “missionaries of hope among peoples” is an invitation to be men and women of hope in a time marked by discouragement, fragmentation, and the loss of meaning. We live in an age that lacks direction, connection, and vibrant faith. In this context, hope is not naïve optimism, but the certainty that God is present in the midst of our real, even painful, stories. And in the fragility of human life, God continues to write a story of salvation.
At the Pontifical Mission Societies of Colombia, we aim to be a Church that lives mission with hope and joy, always going forth, bearing witness to the living and Risen Jesus. To make this experience concrete, we have organised Regional Mission Committees, with whom we walk and support the missionary journey of communities across the country. We encourage one another to keep being missionary-disciples, proclaiming the Gospel with courage and a living hope, trying to illuminate Colombia’s diverse realities through the lens of the Gospel.
To be missionaries of hope among peoples means immersing ourselves in the realities of our communities, walking with them, sharing their joys and hopes, sorrows and fears. And together, we renew ourselves daily with the joy of the Risen Christ who keeps hope alive, even when everything seems to be fading. God is still alive and makes all things new.
The spirit of synodality and global collaboration is at the heart of the Pontifical Mission Societies. How does Colombia journey with the universal Church in this missionary path?
In 2024, we celebrated the 13th National Missionary Congress, marking 100 years since the first congress in 1924, which was held in preparation for the great missionary exposition in Rome in 1925. Throughout these past 100 years, we have witnessed a growing missionary dynamism, particularly focused on the Ad Gentes mission.
Here in Colombia, several religious communities have been founded with a specifically Ad Gentes charism. Many priests, religious, seminarians and laypeople have gone out on mission, sharing the Gospel beyond our borders. Colombia has had a presence in many countries across the five continents. Our economic cooperation has also increased, along with greater spiritual awareness of the missionary situations faced by the Church around the world. We truly feel like members of the universal Church and deeply committed to it.
Over the past century, Colombia has advanced in universal missionary cooperation, placing the Ad Gentes mission at the heart of our vision. This is a concrete sign of our global missionary commitment.
After harvesting the fruits of 100 years of mission in Colombia, we now look ahead to a wide path already paved by many men and women who preceded us, working tirelessly to announce the Gospel.
Together with the Episcopal Commission for Missions, we have launched VISION 20-36. In this first phase of our second missionary centenary, we are focusing on the three pillars from the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops: Communion, Participation, and Mission. Our goal is that by 2036, the entire community of baptised people in Colombia will be clearly, actively and fully engaged in the Ad Gentes mission.
Pope Francis, and now Pope Leo XIV, constantly call us to look towards the peripheries. In Colombia, how do young people, Indigenous communities, and those affected by violence or displacement shape your missionary priorities and spirit? And in your view, how can their witness enrich and renew the universal Church?
The peripheries are a privileged space where mission comes to life. In Colombia, these peripheries are both geographic and existential.
At the Pontifical Mission Societies, we work to ensure that the voices of young people, Indigenous communities, and all those affected by violence are heard, valued and accompanied in our missionary work. Mission is not about “bringing something”, but about bringing “Someone”, the person and life of Jesus, active among his people.
As National Director of the PMS, I believe firmly that accompanying evangelisation in the peripheries, both geographic and existential, has a profound national impact and enriches the Church’s universal work. When a Church allows itself to be evangelised by the peripheries, it rediscovers the human face of Christ and the freshness of the Gospel.
The greatest witness we can give is the ever-young joy of the Gospel, which helps us to live in constant hope for a new heaven and a new earth. The Mission entrusted to the Church by Christ becomes a source of hope for humanity.
