One Church, one body
It is easy to think of the missions as someone else’s concern, a good cause far away that has little to do with life in a British parish. The Church does not see it that way, and never has. When a mother in northern Cameroon cannot get her child to a clinic, or a family in Sindh is held in bonded labour, that is not separate from the faith we say on a Sunday. It is part of it. We belong to one body, and the body does not stop at the parish door.
This is why the Society has always spoken of its supporters not as donors but as taking part. A gift, a prayer, a Mass offered for the missions: these are not payments made to a charity. They are a share in the work itself. You do not fund the mission from the outside. Through them, you are in it.
How your part reaches the work
In England and Wales, most of that taking-part still happens through the Red Box. It sits in well over two hundred thousand Catholic homes, filled a coin at a time and emptied by someone from the parish. The Society shares it with Missio, the Church’s own charity for world mission, and between them they have done so for the better part of a century. The larger share goes to Missio, for the young churches it supports across the world; the rest comes to Mill Hill, chiefly to form and send the next generation of missionaries.
From there it becomes particular. It reaches Fr Cyprian Ta-ah in the North-West of Cameroon, keeping some form of school going where the schools have closed. It reaches the work among the Kachi Kohli families in Sindh, where children whose parents have known only bonded labour are learning to read. It is not a sum disappearing into a general fund. It arrives somewhere, with someone, and does something plain and good.
You can also give directly, to the Society or to a particular piece of work, if that suits you better. The route matters less than the fact of it. Either way, your part reaches real places and real people.
What the work actually is
The work itself spans around 19 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, and takes whatever shape a place needs: pastoral care, education, health, standing with people in poverty or injustice. Around two hundred young men are in formation to carry it on, most of them now from the very countries the Society once travelled to. You can read more about all of it elsewhere on this site. What matters here is simply that it is real, it is particular, and your part in it is real too.
