Today’s mission goes way beyond pastoral services to deliver basic human needs:

• It is service and liberation.
• It is action on behalf of justice and peace.
• It is economic development among the most impoverished.
• It is education as transformation.

Read more about our International Ministries on the following continents:

• Africa
• Latin America
• Asia

From the beginning, Spiritans have been offered a ministry of presence and of hope. Over three centuries, we have brought the Word of God to people on five continents and sixty countries.

After a community embraces Christianity, its members need spiritual support and encouragement for their continued growth. Traditionally, Spiritan missionaries administered the sacraments and taught their religion while tending to the basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing.

The Spiritans have a rich history of serving the poor and marginalized—regardless of such complex challenges as working with newly freed slaves on the islands of Haiti, Mauritius, and Reunion; bringing men and women out of slavery in Zanzibar by teaching them career skills, opening hospitals, and schools and providing for daily needs; and ministering to remote areas of Mexico where the growing numbers of faithful lacked priests and the sacraments.

Our goal for each congregation is a viable local faith community with its own leadership that incorporates the local language and customs. For instance, in Africa, two-thirds of the 1,500 Spiritans are African-born. More than half of the leadership of the Spiritans worldwide is chosen from Africa. The key to our missionary work there is “to be African with the Africans”—regardless of where we were born—and this is true for each country around the world where we work and live.

THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOOD NEWS OF JESUS TO THOSE WHO HAVE NEVER HEARD IT AT ALL OR HEARD IT INADEQUATELY REMAINS OUR CORE MISSION.