With an expressed goal to “cultivate the missionary heart of the Diocese of Trenton,” the diocesan Office of Missions strives to educate the faithful in parishes, Catholic schools and religious education programs in Burlington, Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean counties of the importance of supporting the missionaries who spread the Gospel word both here and abroad.

To that end, Father Peter James Alindogan, director of the office and pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Parish, Cinnaminson, and a team of about a dozen missionaries conduct visits to the 107 parishes of the Diocese each spring and summer to educate parishioners of the challenges experienced by the 1,150 mission dioceses around the globe.

The Mission Cooperative Program has enabled Trenton faithful to learn of missionary efforts worldwide, and teach them about the lay organizations that provide direct service to the poor. Last year, the parishes of the Diocese contributed $523,134.36 during the program, and $236,037.91 in Mission Sunday collections.

Students in elementary and high schools, alongside those youth who attend religious education programs, have benefitted from Mission Reachout sessions, opportunities to hear personal witness from missionaries who have served in various countries. The teaching sessions involving multiple schools and held throughout the Diocese, were followed by a mission liturgy so that the children might offer prayer and sacrifice for the support of missionary work.

Father Alindogan noted another important source of funding for mission work comes from schoolchildren of the Diocese during the annual mission collections. “The offering that our children give every year goes to the [Society for the Propagation of the Faith] in New York and then is fairly distributed to the children of the world through the Missionary Childhood Association,” he explained. “The challenge is allocating the aid to a world of people in need, to prioritize it.”

This year, the usual format was replaced by evangelization on a grander scale. At the request of Bishop O’Connell, the Catholic Schools Mass, held this year on Oct. 15, was the site of a diocese-wide address delivered to the more than 800 students, teachers and staff of the 32 elementary and nine high schools seated in the Trenton cathedral. Held days before Mission Sunday, the Mass celebrates Catholic education and has become a demonstration of the universality of faith.

During the Mass, Sister Lisa Valentini, a member of the Missionary Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, shared tales of her 41 years of missionary service in Peru, Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic with the students in the Cathedral through witness and song.

The Philadelphia native recounted how a religious sister asked if she had ever thought about life as a religious; Sister Lisa’s initial ‘no’ changed to a ‘yes’ as she pondered her future. “I kept thinking, I don’t want to let God down,” she recalled. “And if it’s something God wants, I thought it’s got to be pretty cool.”

Her ‘yes’ first led to a job as a second grade teacher in Philadelphia, then she moved on to missionary work in Peru and Hispaniola. “There are over one billion people in the world who have not heard the name Jesus. We have all this technology and in the middle of all this there still are those who don’t know Jesus,” Sister Lisa noted.

As part of her missionary work, her order was charged with building a school in the Dominican Republic. Food there is scarce, and the religious sisters noticed parents have nothing to offer their students as after-school snacks.

Through the support of the missions, Sister Lisa informed the congregation, the sisters are able to offer the children bananas and popsicles as snacks. “All of the mission work done across the world, you’re a part of it,” she told the students in the Cathedral.

At the close of the Mass, Father Alindogan introduced more than a dozen missionaries who have assisted in the Mission Cooperative Program and Mission Reachout visits to schools and parishes throughout the Diocese. Among those men and women religious was Hospitaler Sister of Mercy Theresina Thadathil, a native of India.

During her tenure in Mumbai, a poor, densely populated city in India, Sister Theresina assisted with running a school where she both instilled the Catholic faith in the young and aided their families in earning a livelihood. “We teach them about Jesus and transmit the faith, again and again, through the generations of sick and poor,” she said succinctly of her life’s work. “For the children with no home, that are abandoned, we teach them the love of Jesus, and we [sisters] love them.”

As their name indicates, religious of the Hospitaler order also may be found in hospitals and institutions caring for the sick, elderly and dying; Sister Theresina has served both old and young in India, the Philippines, Madagascar, Cameroon, Indonesia, Italy, Poland and a number of African nations during the course of her three decades of service as a missionary. She currently resides and works with members of her order in Villa Raffaella, Pleasantville, an assisted living facility for senior citizens.

Sister Theresina’s advice to the young, future missionaries she encounters is straightforward. “A child could be a missionary by praying and doing small sacrifices,” she declared, then added with a smile, “and help the missions through donations.”

Father Charles Muorah, parochial vicar in St. Isaac Jogues Parish, Marlton, began his missionary work as a Catholic student attending an Anglican high school in his home country of Nigeria. He arrived in the Diocese of Trenton in 2001 after serving as a missionary in four dioceses there and a year in Malta.

“It was God’s plan, my God-given direction to evangelize,” he remembered. But Father Muorah, who has conducted mission outreach throughout the 24 years of his priestly life, believes faithful of all ages have the responsibility to share God’s word with others.

“Every Christian is called to be a missionary disciple. A missionary disciple is not an expert but one who encounters Jesus in one’s life and shares that same joy, the fruit of the encounter with another person,” he declared. “It is a learning process that plants the joy of the Gospel wherever one goes; touching people’s lives and filling them with the joy of salvation.”

Father Muorah is continuing his mission outreach in diocesan schools, and at home. He related a recent conversation with his seven-year-old nephew who told his uncle he wished to follow in his footsteps as a missionary servant to God’s people.

“My little nephew said to me, ‘Uncle Father Charles, I want to be a priest. I say my prayers and I practice how to do Mass.’ And I responded, ‘Good news.’”