Living Rosary Association supports mission work through daily prayer

World Mission Sunday reminds Catholics of ongoing mission territory around the globe

Submitted on October 9, 2025

As World Mission Sunday approaches, the archdiocesan Mission Office is inviting the faithful to support evangelization around the world not just monetarily but also through a dedicated practice of prayer.

World Mission Sunday, celebrated this year on Oct. 19, is the annual recognition of the Church’s missionary work around the globe. A collection is taken that day for the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, which provides support for pastoral and catechetical programs, church construction, health care and education in mission territories.

*Francis Kokoroko | Reuters*
Worshippers attend morning Mass at St. John the Baptist Church in Cape Coast, Ghana, in May. World Mission Sunday, celebrated this year on Oct. 19, is the annual recognition of the Church’s missionary work around the globe.

Last year, the Mission Office started a chapter of the Living Rosary Association, which traces its roots back to Society of the Propagation of the Faith foundress Blessed Pauline Jaricot. Association members are placed into groups of 20 and assigned a different mystery of the Rosary and a region to pray for each week. Among the group, the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries are covered and intentional prayers are offered for people across the world to experience the fullness of God’s love, peace and mercy.

The archdiocesan chapter also uses Ven. Fulton Sheen’s World Mission Rosary, a rosary with different-colored decades to represent five different regions of the globe.

In his final message for World Mission Sunday, Pope Francis said that missionaries of hope are men and women of prayer.

“Let us not forget that prayer is the primary missionary activity and at the same time ‘the first strength of hope,’” the late pope said in his remarks, published Jan. 25.

Nick Perryman, a parishioner at the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France (Old Cathedral), has felt a natural draw to pray for the global Church going back as far as his confirmation, when he chose Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier as his patron. He learned about the Living Rosary Association and the World Mission Rosary on a young adult retreat this summer, and it felt like a natural fit.

“I love the daily requirement; I think that really helps,” he said. “And for me, establishing that repetition has been very helpful. Sometimes I go to the 12:10 Mass at the Old Cathedral, and I work Downtown, so being able to walk and pray with different meditations on these mysteries has been pretty cool.”

Perryman has also found inspiration in the missionary background of Pope Leo XIV, who spent much of his priesthood and episcopacy in Peru before joining the Roman Curia at the Vatican.

“His impact on his community in Peru, what it is now versus what it was when he first got to his little area of Peru that he was sent to, was pretty incredible,” Perryman said.

The Archdiocese of St. Louis was itself a mission diocese when it was founded nearly 200 years ago, Perryman noted, receiving assistance from Blessed Pauline Jaricot and what was then known as the Association for the Propagation of the Faith.

Mission identity is “really in our DNA as an archdiocese,” he said.

Helen Grimm, an association member and parishioner at Mary Queen of Peace in Webster Groves, supported the Pontifical Mission Societies alongside her late husband for many years and continues her support in his honor. She sets aside time each Wednesday to pray her daily decade of the Rosary in her parish eucharistic adoration chapel and asks for the Lord’s intercession for her designated region of the world, she said.

“This has helped me to be more faithful in praying the Rosary and focusing on the great need for our Lord’s help and mercy in our world,” Grimm said.

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