In 2006, Benedict XVI inaugurated this new form of evangelization by sending the first 7 missio ad gentes. Each of them is made up of a priest, accompanied by 4-5 families with several children. At the request of the bishop, the family receives the mandate to evangelize de-Christianized or pagan areas, with the mission to make present a Christian community in which “to be perfectly one for the world to believe.”
St. John Paul II, in the VI Symposium of European Bishops of 1985, indicated that to respond to the secularization of Europe, it was necessary to return to the first apostolic model.
Thus, these missio ad gentes, in imitation of the domus ecclesiae, gather in the houses in the midst of the unbaptized and those far from Christianity.
Twelve years after the first families were sent, the result is that many remote and pagan people, who had never entered a church, get close to these Christian communities and begin a itinerary of conversion or begin to approach faith.
These communities – which do not start from a holy places, but live in midst of the world – constitute a true “courtyard of the Gentiles where men can approach God without knowing him ”, as Benedict XVI pointed out in the speech to the Roman Curia in the year 2009.
An extraordinary element of this experience are the fruits of communion and unity that occur within one’s own family, between parents and children.
On March 18, 2016, Pope Francis sent 250 families forming 50 new missio ad gentes for the five continents. During this meeting, Pope Francis himself explained what this missionary modality consists of: “the missio ad gentes are created at the request of the bishops of the dioceses to which they are destined and are made up of 4-5 families – most of them with more than four children – a presbyter, a young man and two women. They all form a community that has the mission of giving the signs of faith that attract men to the beauty of the Gospel” he said .
Pope Benedict XVI, from 2006 to 2012, sent 58 missio ad gentes and Pope Francis has sent 128.
On May 5, 2018, at the international meeting for the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the birth of the first community of the Way in Rome, celebrated in Tor Vergata, Pope Francis sent 34 new missio ad gentes.
The number of families in the Way that are in mission for the new evangelization is 1,668, with about 6,000 children, in 108 countries on 5 continents, including the 216 missio ad gentes in 62 nations.