1977 Salt and Light Media
1975 headline: BRAND NEW, CATHOLIC document on EVANGELIZATION is released. We were so excited! It was an unprecedented rallying cry to live a life of missionary faith, especially by sharing the Good News of Jesus, Christ. Since then, On Evangelization in the Modern World, by Pope St. Paul VI has been referred to as the final document of Vatican Council II, published ten years after the closing of that historic event.
It has been read and studied by thousands upon thousands! And it is no exaggeration to say that Pope Saint Paul VI is the man who launched a billion Catholic evangelizers, filled with new zeal for sharing the Gospel. Its wisdom begs another look today, another effort to bring the whole world to the foot of the Cross and into the Kingdom of God.
One of our favorite quotes is: “The task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church. It is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present-day society make all the more urgent. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize.”
Update
Some years later, on Oct. 19, 2014, a miracle was approved involving an unborn child in the 1990s in California, with serious health problem that could easily lead to brain damage… Instead of an abortion the mother prayed for Paul VI’s intercession, using a fragment of the pope’s vestments that a friend had given her. And so the child was healed and the Good News of God’s love was underlined once more.
Still later, on October 14, 2018, Pope St. Paul VI was canonized. Perhaps one of his greatest tributes lies in the words of Pope Francis, who Called Paul VI, a man who “knew how to witness, in difficult years, to the faith [the mercy, the healing and the missionary zeal that we can find] in Jesus Christ.”