Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago and around the world will have a chance to recommit themselves to the mission of spreading the Gospel during Masses the weekend of Oct. 24, World Mission Sunday. They can do that by contributing to the annual World Mission Sunday collection, by praying for missionaries who bring the Gospel to developing countries and by remembering that, because of their baptismal obligations, they must also give witness in their daily lives, said Sister Madge Karecki, director of the archdiocese’s Office for Mission Education and Animation. “It’s really to raise awareness, as well as prayers, as well as money,” said Karecki, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph-Third Order of St. Francis. “We are all on mission.” Last year’s World Mission Sunday collection raised almost $635,000 and amounted to nearly a quarter of the office’s revenue for the year. The office shares that money with missions around the world and with pontifical mission societies. It also collects Mass requests and stipends for priests in mission countries and organizes mission appeals in parishes throughout the archdiocese. One diocese that has benefited from the help of the archdiocese’s mission office is that of Puna, Peru. The diocese has an ongoing relationship with St. Michael Parish (South Shore), which has created the Missionary Association Working for a World Without Hunger, a faith-based humanitarian organization registered in Peru and working under the leadership of Father Robert Perez, the pastor of St. Michael. Father Guido Gutierrez, a priest of the Diocese of Puno, is St. Michael’s associate pastor and works to spread the word about the missionary association. The association is able to collect two or three shipping containers full of goods each year for the people of Puno, he said, and the Office for Mission Education and Animation has helped by paying the cost to transport the goods to Peru, he said. “Without them, we would have no way of getting the goods to them,” he said. “We send clothing, food, tools. Last year we sent a secondhand truck for a priest, so he could get to his churches that were maybe 20 miles apart.” While some areas of Peru have some affluent residents, Puno is in a mountainous region and the people are very poor, Gutierrez said. Msgr. Kenneth Enang of the Archdiocese of Abuja in Nigeria said the faithful in his diocese also have benefited from the generosity of the archdiocese. “The Archdiocese of Chicago has been a friend of our mission for a long time,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Depending upon our needs we use the money always for specific projects. Last year we used it for the training of our seminarians who want to become priests. We subsidize their meals and book purchase.” In a post on the archdiocesan blog, Karecki reminded Catholics that they must keep their sense of mission for their own sake as well the sake of those who benefit from the missions. “If the church should lose its sense of mission it would deny the very source of its identity,” she wrote. “Every diocese, parish and individual member must be concerned about mission. It is not enough to be concerned about maintaining the structures and practices we have established; what we must do is continually expand our horizons so that every aspect of parish life reflects, or is an expression of, mission. “Today, more than 1,150 young churches of Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Latin America have these same needs we had in this country until the beginning of the 20th century,” she wrote. “As we remember our own mission history this World Mission Sunday, we can offer our prayers and financial help for the young and growing churches of today.”