SEDOS Residential Seminar 2025
Since its beginnings in 1964 during the Second Vatican Council, SEDOS (Service of Documentation and Study on Global Mission) has been a forum for thoughtful exchange on mission in the Church. Among its founding members was Fr Hein Mondé, then Superior General of the Society of African Missions (SMA), who played a key role in shaping both the organisation and its early contributions to the Church’s missionary vision. The group offered significant input into the Ad Gentes document, which continues to inform the Church’s understanding of mission today.
From its inception, SEDOS has provided a space for religious congregations to engage in shared study and reflection on the meaning and demands of mission in an evolving world. It brings together missionary leaders, scholars, and practitioners committed to deepening the Church’s global witness through dialogue, discernment, and collective insight. Our Congregational Leader, Sr Mary Baron OLA, has served on the SEDOS Executive Committee since 2019—first as Vice President, and since 2022, as President. Her term will conclude at the Annual General Assembly in November 2025.
From 16 to 20 June 2025, missionaries from all continents, members of Congregational Leadership Teams, missiology students, and some preparing for their final perpetual commitment in religious missionary life came together at the Centro Ad Gentes, Nemi, in the Roman hills, to reflect on the specific missionary call emerging from the Church’s current path of renewal and reform: synodality. Three days reflecting on the theme “Missionary Institutes and Synodality: Charism, Prophecy, and Witness” renewed the sense of commitment to furthering synodality within and among different missionary institutes. Internal renewal of processes and structures goes hand in hand with the missionary commitment to be a witnessing presence, bringing God’s love to the peripheries of our world—not only geographical, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery.
What follows is the statement issued at the close of the seminar. It arises from this shared discernment and joins the wider call for peace and justice in a divided world and echoing Pope Leo’s calls for peace .
Statement from the SEDOS Residential Seminar 2025
We, seventy missionaries from thirty Missionary Institutes, representing thirty-two nationalities across all continents, lay men and women, religious brothers, sisters and priests, gathered in the serene and spiritually resonant setting of Centro Ad Gentes in Nemi, outside Rome, for the 2025 SEDOS Residential Seminar. Our shared time together was a profound witness to the Church’s intercultural, international and intergenerational richness and to the possibility of unity in diversity in our increasingly polarized world.
Through mutual listening, prayer, and creative engagement, we searched together for the paths of tomorrow’s mission—rooted in the Gospel, responsive to the cries of the earth and of people who are made poor, and marked by the joy of walking together.
In the face of today’s global chaos—marked by war, hunger, violence, and environmental disaster—we feel a renewed urgency to become instruments of justice, peace, and the integrity of creation. An appeal resounds among us: to intensify our prayer and take courageous action, both personally and collectively, to help build a world where peace, hope, dialogue, and communion are real and tangible.
With one voice, we join Pope Leo XIV in his urgent plea: “Let everything possible be done to achieve genuine, just and lasting peace as soon as possible.” We echo his call to all those who hold power—use that power not to destroy, but to bring peace; not to divide, but to reconcile; not to kill, but to protect life. Put an end to all war and killing. Let peace reign in our hearts, in our communities, and in our world.
As missionary men and women, we reaffirm our commitment to the shared journey of synodality—locally and universally. We pray that the Church may increasingly become a bridge of unity and healing for humanity and all of God’s creation.
May our tender and loving God bless our mission and all our efforts to remain prophetic witnesses of God’s merciful love