|
Dear Friends in Christ,
This weekend, we welcome Father Daniele Criscione, PIME, for our annual Mission Appeal. Father Daniele will preach at all the masses this weekend.
As US Mission Center Director, Fr. Daniele has played a pivotal role in shaping the global reality of missions through technology. A takeaway from his time in youth spiritual animation in Italy, he is no stranger to using technology for evangelization. Fr. Daniele saw the possibility, provided by Zoom, to join our friends closer than ever before with PIME Missionaries around the world. Now, over distances that once seemed immeasurable, our missionaries can join our families at home in prayer.
From the Detroit Catholic:
Live close to Christ, live close to the people, and the people will find Christ.
It’s this mentality that drives Fr. Daniele Criscione, director of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions' (PIME) Detroit Mission Center in northwest Detroit.
As the mission center director, it’s Fr. Criscione’s responsibility to cultivate relationships with the local Catholic community to support the PIME missionaries' work around the globe.
With about 500 PIME priests, brothers and seminarians serving in 19 countries, the projects are as diverse as the institute itself, providing foster care, schools, food pantries clothing and building up communities around the world.
“We build chapels, dig wells, help with leprosy center and colonies — really many things,” Fr. Criscione told Detroit Catholic. “But what we really try to do is just to be with Jesus, and through our life and works, to inspire people to make Jesus known.”
Fr. Criscione often counsels those who believe they have a calling to the missions, and he tells them the same thing: More important than going to the ends of the earth to preach the Gospel, the main goal of a missionary is live in friendship with Jesus, something everyone can do in their own backyard.
“People think the role of a missionary is to proselytize, but that’s not what we do,” Fr. Criscione said. “Our goal is actually to live closer to Jesus, and then each one of us will be a martyr to a certain extent. The word 'martyr' comes from the Greek word that means 'to witness.' If you’re a martyr, you’re a witness.
Read More HERE
| 
