Auxiliary Bishop James T. Schuerman offers a blessing to two women from Mexico at the global Jubilee of the Missions celebration earlier this month in Rome. They had asked that he bless them as well as their banners. (Photo courtesy of United States Catholic Mission Association)
The Catholic Church has always had missionaries, from the moment Christ sent his disciples forth to proclaim the Good News.
The modern-day missionary spirit was celebrated in Rome earlier this month in a global Jubilee of the Missions celebration Oct. 4-5 during the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope.
The United States Catholic Mission Association led 27 pilgrims, many from Milwaukee, on a powerful experience at the Vatican and other places in Italy Oct. 2-11.
“It was exceptional. I’ve been to Rome on several occasions including different pilgrimages. I have never seen Rome so alive and crowded with people because of this Jubilee Year,” said Milwaukee Auxiliary Bishop James T. Schuerman, the episcopal advisor for the USCMA who served as spiritual director for the pilgrimage.
The visit included the Wednesday message of a missionary-turned-Holy-Father Pope Leo XIV.
“The pope, of course, was able to drive through the crowd with the popemobile and greet the people. It was just amazing. I felt a lot of energy around this. In particular, because it had a mission orientation, I just felt we were celebrating something important, the Church’s evangelization efforts, and I thought it was a very good witness for us.”
Dr. Antoinette Mensah, the director of the Office for World Mission and the Society for the Propagation of the Faith for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, led the pilgrimage as president of the USCMA Board of Directors.
“All the people coming had some level of anticipation of what it means to be hope-filled,” Dr. Mensah said, in this 2025 Jubilee Year with the theme “Pilgrims of Hope.”
“While most of them were not in direct mission engagement, they all could relate to the call that Pope Francis had for us to reach out to the margins, which has been edified by Pope Leo XIV. He is a missionary and has experience connecting with people. He recognizes that being a missionary isn’t doing stuff for people, but it is about building the relationship, understanding the need, the concern, engaging.”
Pilgrims experienced not only daily Mass and the Wednesday message with the Holy Father but time at all four Holy Doors of the Vatican, the burial site of newly canonized St. Carlo Acutis in Assisi, and the nearby burial locations of Ss. Francis and Clare.
USCMA Executive Director Kevin Foy says that the experience challenged pilgrims to live out the mission of the Catholic faith in action as well as in word.
“If you look at the Gospel, when Jesus would commission people on a mission, he would say to go forth to every town, heal every illness and proclaim the good news. He said to heal first. He was focusing on how you are attending to people’s realities,” Foy said.
“I think right now, especially with Pope Leo being himself a missionary in the traditional sense, having been a missionary in Peru, you can kind of see how he’s talking about mission really in the same way.”
Dr. Mensah said being in places like the location of St. Paul’s beheading brought powerful moments of conviction for the pilgrims, making them ask themselves questions that could lead to deeper missionary commitment.
“To be in certain spaces and look at the history of persecution of faith, it was more than just going to a beautiful shrine. It was really a question mark for each of us on the strength to follow your conviction, about where our faith stands. Could we stand the test of time if we were challenged?” said Dr. Mensah.
“It made you think about the different conflicts that go on related to religion and faith. How do we treat each other? How do we see the poor? How do we address the needs of others? How can we really be those missionary disciples that Pope Francis and now Pope Leo have reinforced and called?”
Bishop Schuerman said that as the Church evolves into one focused on mission at both the local and global levels, there’s been a raising of consciousness among Milwaukee-area parishioners about their role in the mission of the Church, and how it has evolved into one that truly encounters and embraces what makes us each unique as children of God.
“One of the things that a missionary has to do is to be open to differences, particularly if you’re going on foreign mission, to be open to cultural difference, to understand that people are definitely different in some ways, but that’s a good thing, and then to learn how to communicate in those ways cross-culturally,” said Bishop Schuerman, who was selected for missionary service at the archdiocesan sister parish, La Sagrada Familia, in the Dominican Republic, where he served from 1992 to 1996.
“You can go from one neighborhood to the other and you’re in a different culture, and you can be very defensive about it, but if you’re proclaiming the Good News by word or by action, you have to have an understanding of the people you’re serving, and that can mean conversion in your own life, an attitudinal change for the better.”
