"Missionary work remains the first service that the Church owes to today’s mankind, to steer and evangelise cultural, social and ethical changes; to offer the salvation of Christ to the man of our time, in many parts of the world humiliated and oppressed by endemic poverties, violence, the systematic denial of human rights". This is the core of the Pope’s message for the World Missionary Day planned for October 21st about: "All the Churches for all the world". "The Church cannot shirk this universal mission continued Benedict XVI in the document published today . For it, it has a binding force". The missionary task, recalls the Pope, was entrusted by Christ "first and foremost to Peter and the Apostles", and therefore "nowadays it is above all up to Peter’s Successor, whom the Divine Providence has chosen as the visible foundation of the unity of the Church, and to the Bishops who are directly responsible for evangelisation, both as the members of the College of Bishops and as Pastors of the particular Churches". Hence the Pope’s appeal "to the Pastors of all the Churches placed by the Lord at the head of His only flock, that they may share the worry of the annunciation and the spreading of the Gospel".
