Launch of 'mission:alive'

Columban Fr Tom O'Reilly with MISNA director Fr Curci, and Cardinal Cormac

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor was special guest at a reception last night in Westminster Cathedral Hall, to celebrate World Mission Month and the launch of 'mission:alive' - a new national campaign to promote the work of global missionaries.

During the afternoon there was an exhibition on the work of missionaries around the world in 'peace, justice and human flourishing'. In the evening there was a seminar on missionaries contributing to news media and reflections on the future of their work in the 21st century.

Cardinal Cormac thanked missionaries present for “your faithful contribution to mission and your great contributions to health and education in so many countries”. He said he admired missionaries for being "so faithful and so good". He mentioned he has ongoing connections with missionaries - one of his cousins is a Columban missionary and he has regular contacts with the Comboni missionaries through living in Chiswick.

Fr Carmine Curci, director of the Missionary News Service (MISNA) gave a seminar on his agency's work. He said MISNA often covered stories not touched by the mainstream media - which, tends to depict the south of the world in terms of wars, famine and natural disaster.

Fr Carmine pointed out that most of the world's news is covered by a very small number of powerful agencies, such as Associated Press, UIP and Reuters, who have their own agenda and also lack local knowledge. For example, with World Youth Day in Madrid, many of the mainstream reports focussed on the 1,000 or so anti-Pope demonstrators, while few spoke with many of the one and a half million young people, or listened to what the Pope had to say in his addresses to them.

Speaking of the 'wind of change' sweeping across the Arab world and elsewhere Fr Carmine said it has never been more important for the Church to produce good, well balanced and accurate news reports.

Quoting an African proverb, he said: "you cannot smile with someone else's teeth". The role of MISNA was to proclaim the Good News and give a voice to the voiceless.

The strength of MISNA partly comes from the fact that it can draw on a network of people on the ground, who speak the language, have good local knowledge, and the trust and respect of the communities in which they live. Often MISNA reports from places that no foreign reporters have been able to reach, he pointed out.

Rt Hon John Battle agreed that modern technology could empower ordinary people to get the truth out. A fax machine had been an instrument of liberation for getting out names of people who had been killed in one war zone he had known. But, quoting Pope Benedict, he said: "as society becomes more globalised it may make us neighbours, but it does not make us brothers and sisters." There was also just as much a need for personal contact and for the individual to be heard.

Looking to the future role of missionaries in communications, John Battle told the story of a young ex-offender he knew who had been advised to do a daily walk around the block doing his 'VVWs' - thinking about his 'Vision', 'Values' and 'What are you going to do about it?'.