OMP Spain: with less active missionaries, it is still leading donations

The Memory 2024 Of the Pontifical Mission Works (WPO) in Spain, they reflect a gradual drop in the number of missionaries (about 1,500 less than in 2020), while the country remains a leader in worldwide donations, only behind the United States.

Thus, Spain contributed to the universal funds of solidarity a around 15% of the total, while the United States reached the environment of 23%. The rest of the National Secretariats of WPO help with contributions not exceeding 5%.

In reference to income year after year, Spain has gone from obtaining 17.2 million euros at 2020 to 18.5 million in 2024.

The director of OMP Spain, P. José María Calderón, wanted to recognize, during the presentation of the memory, the generosity of the donors: “It is very nice to see that Spain has not only lowered the collection but that it is little by little recovering what I had lost at one time with the pandemic.”

The number of missionary activities has also grown and, in general, who participate in them.

This is the case of prayer vigils, which in 2020, in full pandemic, were 76 and have been increasing until last year with 177. In them an increase of the participants has been experienced, which already exceeds 9,000.

Regarding the mission masses of missionaries, with ups and downs, it has been possible to exceed 70 last year, with a very significant assistance in 2024, but that does not reach the best record of the last five (1,506 in 2021).

Regarding the Eucharistas to send young people, for missionary activities, especially during the European summer, there is the paradox that, with a decrease in number (10 in 2024, compared to 21 in 2020), the number of envoys has experienced an important resurgence, tripling in 2024 the previous year, as Fr. Calderón has highlighted.

These thriving data, which invite hope to live with the waning reality of Spanish missionaries. In the last five years, OMP Spain have gone from having 10,629 missionaries registered at 9,684, of which they were active more than 7,000 in 2020 and, five years later, they are 5,624.

Consequently, the number of missionaries who are in Spain collaborating in the missionary action or the waiting for destination has increased slightly, at a rate of about 100 a year on average.

This fall is reflected in that there are fewer diocesan and presbyters of religious orders and people enshrined in mission lands. This contrasts with a slight increase in the number of missionary laity last year.

A fact that has not apparently varied is that of the country in which there are more Spanish missionaries, which remains Peru, ahead of Venezuela, although in both, in line with the general trend, every year they are less.

Faced with this, Fr. Calderón explained that the demand for the attention to the missionary work of the Catholic Church multiplies, since from 2023 to 2024 the mission territories have passed from 1,123 to 1,131.

“There comes a point where this territory is divided because the life of the Church begins to work” and then the partition “because a single bishop with a single curia cannot be served well,” he explained.

“How is your heart?”

Together with Father Calderón, Fr. Heliodoro Picazo, a Spanish missionary who marched in 1988 Guatemala appeared, in principle with a commitment for three years: “Then we renewed, the bishop was happy, I too and there we were expanding.” Until today.

From his missionary experience, Fr. Picazo highlights the joy and faith of the Christians of Guatemala: “Priests, Christians know faith. We know dogmas, we know the theory, we have sometimes stuck in our heads, but they have it in their hearts.”

As a sign of this, he explained that the Quechí Indians, with whom he has lived for years, in the morning, have a particular way of being interested in the other: “They ask Quechí Masá, lacholHow is your heart?

“If your heart is happy, even if you are sick, even if you do not have the security you are going to eat, even if whatever happens, that is only understood from the poor, from that spirituality, from that God, that what Saint Teresa said and that sometimes we say, ‘only God is enough’, they are not words, it is reality in them,” he explained.

Father Picazo also took the opportunity to explain an anecdote that illustrates even better as the deep joy of faith is manifested, even within the tragedy for the death of a two -year -old girl, the little girl of the eight children of a catechist, responsible for the community.

“He called me, my heart froze, because I went to the communities on horseback, ten, twelve hours, I had dinner there with his family, that is, that we were practically family, and I was made up, and I was crying, and I was doing dust, as we said. When I saw the children, the girl in a cardboard box, because there are no coffins, and the children looking at the girl Moment with that joy, with that faith in the resurrection, with that calm … I thought for me: I don’t know if I succeeded, here you don’t have to be sad, helium, you don’t get the joy, but at least you are not crying with these people. ”

Beyond this, he said that “the hardest, hardest problem that can be there, is to find it at that time, we would say, of difficulty, death threats, chest guns, of turns that give the cars because they take out the trucks from the road. However, you are alive.”

So much so, that the missionary’s compadre told him once: “You are like Terminator. It never ends, no matter how much accident it has. ”

It is at that time when the missionary, he acknowledges, feels the value of the sentence of others. Regarding his own, he affirms that he has abandoned the prayer of petition: “My prayer is: Lord, what can I help you?”

Many have told him “what need to go to suffer, Helio?”, To which he replies that the vocation to holiness is simple: “growing oneself to serve and, that, doing it enjoying” despite the difficulties.

This means not complaining: “The body is screwed, but I am fine. As soon as you identify with the body, you are lost. And, in addition, the body is not the most important thing.”