Two hundred years ago, a trio of missionaries were sent westward to bring peace and stability to an untamed colony.

It took a trip to Peru for Grade 12 student Carolyn Lee to gain a new appreciation for her classroom in Toronto.

WASHINGTON – In remote northeastern India, where Christianity is largely unknown, members of two Eastern Catholic churches are taking people on a journey of faith simply by living with them.

October is a special month for Catholics because it is the month Pope Pius XI chose in 1926 for the first World Mission Sunday. Falling on Oct. 23, it is the day we remember missionaries such as priests, sisters and lay people who continue to dedicate their lives to living out the gospel through prayer, action and love.

Pope Francis said missionaries are docile to the call of the Holy Spirit which leads them to be consumed by a burning desire to dedicate their life to announcing the gospel, even in the most distant places. The characteristics of those men and women who choose to serve the Church by going on mission were the focus of the Pope’s homily at his morning Mass celebrated in the Santa Marta residence on Tuesday.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Drying livestock carcasses and anguished faces of hungry women and children have become a common feature here as droughts increase due to climate change.

Is it just by coincidence that at the beginning and the end of the Bible there appears a rainbow?

VATICAN CITY - Missionaries do enormous good for the world and the church by bringing God's love to the far corners of the earth and by keeping the church healthy and fruitful, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY - Bringing God's word to mission lands is successful only when missionaries live the Gospel with joy and share the love and goodness they receive from God, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"What is good has the inherent need to be conveyed, to give itself; it cannot stay closed up in itself (because) something good and goodness itself are essentially 'communicatio,'" that is, sharing with others, he said during a brief visit to a center belonging to the missionaries of the Society of the Divine Word.

NEW YORK - Evangelists at a century-old missionary organization in New York spread the word of God without leaving their nondescript building in midtown Manhattan.

The people they evangelize never see the missioners, but they recognize the Light of the World in the materials they receive from the Xavier Society for the Blind.

The organization provides Catholic religious and spiritual material free of charge to more than 10,000 blind, visually impaired and physically restricted people throughout the United States.