Meet the new National Director of Pontifical Mission Societies USA
By Deborah Castellano Lubov
"From the time I was a little boy, reading some of the lives of the great missionary martyrs, I always had a desire to spread the faith..."
In a wide-ranging interview with Vatican Media, Fr. Roger J. Landry, the new National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies USA, expressed how he "humbly" welcomes his new responsibility, noting this is likewise why he became a priest.
The Pontifical Mission Societies (TPMS) are a worldwide network at the service of the Pope that supports the missions and the Young Churches with prayer and charity.
During the conversation, the priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, who currently serves as Catholic Chaplain to Columbia University in New York, reflected on the new role which he officially assumes in January, as well as the vital role of missions for the Catholic Church.
The Papal Missionary of Mercy, who was ecclesiastical assistant to Aid to the Church in Need USA, prepared for the Tenth National Eucharistic Congress by helping lead the Seton Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage from New Haven, Connecticut, to Indianapolis from May through July 2024.
A graduate of Harvard College and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, Fr. Landry also served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York from 2015 to 2022.
Father Landry, what does this appointment, as the new National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, mean to you?
To be named the new National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States is a humbling honor for me. From the time I was a little boy, reading some of the lives of the great missionary martyrs, I always had a desire to spread the faith. It's one of the reasons why I'm a priest. And now, several decades later, to have the full time responsibility of creating a missionary spirituality, or stimulating or augmenting it, in the United States, as well as helping all those who are doing the Church's frontline mission work of bringing Christ Himself in the sacraments, as well as bringing the Gospel to those who need Him just as much as we do, is such an incredible and exciting challenge for me. I'm I overwhelmed by the request. I see God's fingerprints behind it. And if God's fingerprints are behind it, then I know that the graces are going to be there to help me do this job as well as I can.
Could you shed light on the activities of the Societies for those who may not be so familiar with it?
There are 1,100 missionary sort of territories in the Church, and the Pontifical Mission Societies globally tries to make their work possible. We help them in their day to day life. We build their churches, we build their schools, we build their seminaries and religious houses to form future priests and religious. We help out with many of their needs to spread the faith. They have very concrete, tangible needs for which we try to provide the necessary resources.
And at the same time, here in the United States, the U.S. Catholics are extremely generous whenever there are needs. But sometimes we give out of charity rather than missionary identity. All of us, as Pope Francis loves to insist, don't have a mission, but we are a mission. This is why we're alive. We continue to use this great commission from the end of Saint Matthew's Gospel, and some of us are going to be doing that on the front lines, like the missionaries and missionary territory, but all of us are supposed to support the missions by our prayers. All of us are supposed to support them to the extent that God has blessed us with the material resources, and through our sacrifices as well, including offering up some sufferings for the spreading of the Gospel. And so those responsibilities are going to be my main task for the next five years.
You mentioned some concrete, tangible needs that are very important in certain areas of the world. Could you elaborate or pick a couple that you feel deserve particular attention that perhaps are being overlooked?
Across the globe there are different missionary territories with different needs, but in pretty much every circumstance, there is a need not just to focus on the present, but also on the future. Through one of the Pontifical Mission Societies, which is the Society of Saint Peter the Apostle, we support seminarians, we support the building of new seminaries in order basically to be to provide for the future of those missionary countries so that they no longer have to receive the help of missionaries coming from the outside. But they can raise up their own clergy to serve those needs. What we've discovered here in the United States is having supported the missions for so many decades, we are now being helped by the 'fruit' of the 'seeds' that we planted across the decades.
Many of the parishes in the United States, for example, are now profiting from the help that the Catholic Church and the United States gave to building up the missions in Latin and Central America, to building up the missions in India, to building up the missions in various countries of Africa.
We're receiving the fruits of priestly vocations, coming back to help us during a time in which we need greater vocations. They are having much greater vocations as a result of our missionary work. We are receiving the great graces that the Lord has given through those missions enabling us to maintain and grow our faith here.
And what do you see as being the greatest challenges ahead?
One of the huge challenges that the Church faces everywhere is secularism that Pope Benedict used to define as living as if God were not a given, living as if God didn't exist. That's impacting the Church's message everywhere. A second great challenge is religious indifferentism that even among believers. A lot don't recognize the specific gift of the Christian faith. Many begin to think, well, if somebody's just living a good life someplace, why do people need to give up everything? Go far away from home in order to bring the Gospel to other countries. That type of mentality has infected the Church in certain places, where the zeal that would have led Saint Francis Xavier to go and implant the Gospel in three very different countries. The type of zeal that led Saint Therese, the Little Flower in her convent, constantly be praying for missionary and for the growth of the gospel.
That type of focus sometimes can get muted in obscured in our churches. That's a second big issue. The third issue is always resources. God does provide and He has been incredibly generous with us, but sometimes, rather than being great stewards of those resources, we build bigger grain bins, to use Jesus's biblical analogy, rather than using those types of things to invest them in the greatest means possible. Such investment could help spread the treasure of our faith so that many others will be able to discover and seize that pearl of great price, which we have been so fortunate as Christians and as Catholics, to have been given.
Looking at all you've accomplished and done throughout your life, how has all of this prepared you? How does it empower you for this appointment?
One of the enjoyable things, since I was asked to take on these new responsibilities, is to retrace my life and how God has prepared me. I just celebrated my 25th anniversary as a priest, and it was a time of great prayer for me.
Thinking of my experience at the Holy See Mission, I had the privilege of being able to proclaim the Gospel to all nations at once. We were doing it through Catholic Social teaching mainly, but that global sense of the Church was something that was intensified during my seven years helping the Holy See's Permanent Observer Mission of the UN.
As far as my experience as a Papal Missionary of Mercy, the greatest mercy we bring is mercy incarnate, Jesus Himself, and that that is a tributary into the great river of the Church's missionary work. I want to bring the skill sets of the Missionaries of Mercy there. We had to preach mercy, and I'm going to have to preach missions. We needed to be agents of that mercy and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. That's what we're trying to enable all across the world. Likewise, I needed to be someone who was capable of extending the mercy sacramentally to others. This is what we're trying to do through the Pontifical Mission Societies, so that confessors all around the world are able to do what Missionaries of Mercy do. My time as an ecclesiastical assistant for Aid to the Church in Need was likewise a great preparation for this.
How so?
We're helping the persecuted and the suffering Church all across the globe, and many of the people we are helping are in missionary territory. That scope and preparation, and seeing what Aid to the Church in Need has done all across the globe, likewise, has focused my vision on some of the crying needs that we have out there in missionary territories. And finally, this experience, one of the great highlights of my life, of being able to carry the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist 65 days across the country, is, I think, an image of the whole Church's mission work of taking Jesus out of our churches, taking Jesus out of our own having a relationship with Him and bringing Him out into the world.
He paid such a precious price on Calvary to redeem, and the Pontifical Mission Societies are not just trying to take the words of God, but the Word Made Flesh all across the globe, to the ends of the earth. Given this, that Eucharistic pilgrimage that was an incredible preparation, not just for the objective work, but subjectively for me.
In what way?
I was talking to Jesus about this new assignment, as He was two inches from my nose for two months, asking for the strength, and various graces, that He knows I'm going to need in order to accomplish this. That physical act of taking Jesus on the road is what I hope to do, helping to lead the Church's missionary efforts.
Father, is there anything else that you would like to add? I know that we are also almost a month away from World Mission Sunday, taking place on the 20th of October...
World Mission Sunday is always held on the third Sunday of October across the world. It's a time for the Church truly to be Catholic, in which She is united with everybody else across the globe. We all focus on the essence of the Church, which is that we have been sent out to continue Christ's saving mission to the ends of the earth. It is where we come together and pray together as a united Church on World Mission Sunday.
How important it is that we think about those who are trying to spread the faith on the frontlines and the 1,100 missionary territories across the globe. We must remember how God has blessed us, and share some of those blessings with those who have far less so that they're able to build the churches, build the schools, build the convents, build the seminaries, to make the Church strong in those areas. It's a great grace for the entire Church. October 20th this year is an opportunity for all of us to focus on who we are and then to become more whom Christ is asking of us to be: the continuation of His saving mission.
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