Sister Ines Paulino Albino: “Launching children into the mission

Sister Sãozinha Vaz - Vatican City

In an interview with Vatican News, Sister Ines Paulino Albino first thanked Pope Francis for her new appointment to the Dicastery for Evangelization, which she considers pure grace from God. She has since requested for prayers to accompany her in the mission entrusted to her.

Rethinking pastoral care

“I am very grateful, and I recognise that this appointment as Secretary General of the Pontifical Mission Society of Holy Childhood is pure grace from God. It is also an honour for my Congregation, the Sisters of Adorers of the Blood of Christ, and for our missionary Church in Guinea-Bissau, my homeland. I see it as a sign that we are also participating in the Church’s universal mission,” said Sister Ines.

Rethinking pastoral care and abandoning the comfortable pastoral criterion of “it has always been done this way” is, for Sister Ines, a crucial approach both for countries with an old Christian tradition and for the relatively newly evangelized. She calls on pastoral agents to be more creative and daring in their mission, investing in children and adolescents, so that these can be channels for revitalising the Church.

By evangelizing children, we are also evangelizing adults, explains Sister Ines. Children and young people, she says, take everything they have learned back to their families. And this process leads to a new society and a renewed Church.

Sister Ines Paulino Albino

Holy Childhood is not limited to projects

Sister Ines recalls that the Pontifical Missionary Society of Holy Childhood was created to make children and adolescents aware of the needs of their fellow countrymen and women throughout the world. The idea was to develop a sensitivity in children, helping them through their daily prayers and their sacrifices with their collections or offerings.

Under the wings of these works, the Institution helps the missionary Church in its work of education and Christian formation of children and adolescents. However, the mission is not reduced to the mere financing of projects, warns the new PMS Secretary General for Holy Childhood.

Raising children’s awareness of solidarity

Sister Ines then outlined the need to continue raising children’s awareness of solidarity because they need to understand that there are children in the world who lack the possibilities that they might have. She sees this awareness-raising as a source of evangelization and development—an important approach because today’s children are the leaders of tomorrow.

Turning her gaze to Africa, especially Guinea-Bissau, her homeland, Sister Ines recalled the famous phrase of Amilcar Cabral, one of Africa’s foremost anti-colonial leaders, pan-Africanist, intellectual and philosopher: “Children are the flowers of our youth, of our homeland.” She appealed to African governments to invest in the education and protection of children.

The primary objective of the Pontifical Mission Societies is to encourage, promote, and animate so that the Church continues to exercise its nature, a missionary nature, concluded Sister Ines.