The two children on the cover of this issue are, as youngsters are wont to be, distracted during Mass. You’ll have to excuse them. It’s our fault. MARYKNOLL magazine’s longtime freelance photographer Sean Sprague was taking pictures at their humble chapel in Guatemala, where Maryknoll Father Bill Mullan was celebrating the liturgy.
The image captures what I feel is at the core of this issue: the diversity of mission and missioners in today’s world. The retrospective profile of Father Mullan, an octogenarian who has traipsed the jungles of Central America for decades, is juxtaposed with a story about Maryknoll seminarian John Siyumbu’s faith journey from Kenya to Chicago to Bolivia as he prepares for the priesthood. Keep reading and you’ll meet a variety of missioners, from another octogenarian, Sister Marion Hughes in Tanzania, to our two newest priests, Fathers Daniel Kim and Peter Latouf in Hong Kong, to the latest cohort of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners, including three children who are part of a mission family serving in Tanzania.
We at MARYKNOLL started this year with our January/February issue featuring the Church’s efforts to listen to and reach out to young people. We will revisit the theme of youth throughout this year. As 2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the first sending of Maryknoll missioners overseas in 1918, so 2019 marks the beginning of a new century of mission—one that belongs to all of us, commissioned missioners and you, our partners, alike.
Lynn F. Monahan
Editor-in-Chief