The year 2026 is a special milestone for two missionary families: the Society of African Missions (SMA) and the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles (OLA). Both congregations are celebrating three significant anniversaries: 170 years since the establishment of the Society of African Missions in 1856; 150 years since the founding of the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles in 1876 and 200 years since the birth of Fr. Augustine Planque, founder of the OLA Sisters and co-founder of the SMAs.

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Ten years after its publication, Pope Leo XIV praises the “valuable teachings” of Amoris Laetitia, and convokes presidents of Bishops’ Conferences to Rome in October 2026 for a meeting to discuss ways to proclaim the Gospel to families today.

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- All baptized Christians share in the Church's mission and, guided by the Holy Spirit, are fit for renewing and building up the Church, Pope Leo XIV said at his weekly general audience.

Every person who has been baptized is called to bear witness to Christ, and the whole Church, beyond its leaders, has a role in preserving the truth of the faith, the pope said March 18 in St. Peter's Square.

Continuing his series of reflections on the Second Vatican Council, the pope focused on the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church ("Lumen Gentium"), and the participation of the lay faithful in Jesus Christ's "priestly, prophetic and royal offices," that is, the offices of teaching, sanctifying and governing.

Everyone enters the Church as a layperson, he said. Through Baptism and Confirmation, the faithful are "more perfectly bound to the Church" and are endowed "with special strength" by the Holy Spirit, so that they are "more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by word and by deed, as true witnesses of Christ," he said, quoting the document.

"This consecration is at the root of the common mission that unites the ordained ministries and the lay faithful," Pope Leo said. In fact, everyone is called to bear witness to the truth of the faith. 

The Doctrinal Commission of the Council specified that the sense of faith "belongs to individual believers not in their own right, but as members of the People of God as a whole," the pope said.

The function of the Holy Spirit is to lead Christians to the truth, and because the entire body of the faithful is anointed by "the holy one," he said, "the Church, therefore, as the communion of the faithful -- which naturally includes the pastors -- cannot err in matters of faith."

"From this unity, which the Magisterium of the Church safeguards, it follows that every baptized person is an active agent of evangelization, called to bear consistent witness to Christ in accordance with the prophetic gift which the Lord bestows upon His whole Church," he said. 

The Holy Spirit, who comes from the Risen Christ, he said, distributes"special graces" among all the faithful, who are then able to contribute to the renewal and building of the Church. 

"Dear friends, let us rekindle in ourselves the awareness of and gratitude for having received the gift of being part of God’s people; and also the responsibility that this entails," he said.

Approximately 240 students from across the U.S. travel to Italy for a 10-day pilgrimage and in Rome, attend Pope Leo’s General Audience in St. Peter's Square. Their chaplain says their mission is to “be a sign of contradiction” to the voices that “do not appreciate the truth of the Gospel.”

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