Celebrating 200 Years of Missionary Presence

Two hundred years ago, St. Eugene de Mazenod went to Rome to get papal approval for his small group of French missionaries, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The odds were against him. He brought zeal to the process, and little else.

Saint Eugene’s preachers were, in his own words, “weak and few in number.” And the Vatican in the 1820s was cautious about new religious institutions, especially from France where the wounds of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era were still fresh.

For two centuries the Oblates have used their Constitutions and Rules to guide them as they minister to the poor, preach in isolated places, and take Christ’s love to the forgotten. These instructions are not just a part of their history but are living and breathing documents that continue to shape the ministries of the Oblates today.

Father Ray Cook, OMI, Provincial for the United States Province, remembers studying the Constitutions and Rules as a seminarian. He discovered it was not just a rulebook, but a way of life deeply rooted in the Gospel and in the needs of the poor. It is a conviction that has carried him through times of grace, challenge, tears, and triumph.

“Oblates, I want to say this clearly: I am deeply proud of you,” said Fr. Ray. “I cannot possibly list the full breadth of what you do: parish ministries, youth programs, Indigenous accompaniment, prison ministry, migrant services, retreats, hidden acts of mercy, and so much more. If we tried to list every good work of this Province, we would need not an article but a book. But Heaven knows. The poor knows, and I know. Thank you for being faithful to your Oblation.”

And thank you to the friends and benefactors of the Oblates who are faithful co-missionaries in these ministries. Lay collaborators have been “the heroes of the heroes” for the past 200 years and will continue to be so well into the future.

Thank you and God bless you for your faith and example. Thank you for helping today’s Oblates become the kind of missionaries that would make St. Eugene de Mazenod very proud.

Address of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV to the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate

February 21, 2026

The following are excerpts from an address by Pope Leo XIV to the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate on their 200th Anniversary of the approval of their Constitutions and Rules as a missionary order of priests and brothers.

Good morning and welcome to all of you. I am delighted to meet with you on the occasion of the 200th Anniversary of the Papal Approval of the Constitutions and Rules of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

“He has sent me to evangelize the poor” was the motto chosen by St. Eugene de Mazenod for the Oblates, whose foundation he courageously undertook at a time when Europe was shaken by complex and dramatic events that heightened the urgency of proclaiming the Gospel to those most in need. He powerfully spoke and acted in defense of the dignity of the poor, workers, and peasants who were exploited as a mere source of labor with their deepest human needs neglected.

He sent religious first to Canada and then to Europe, Africa, and Asia. This generosity was rewarded by an impressive flowering of missionary vocations, which testifies to how docility to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and attention to the demands of charity are sources of fruitfulness and a leaven of growth for every foundation.

Even today, with more than three thousand religious spread across 70 countries, you continue to carry out your ministry with the same preferential openness to the least among us, enriched by the precious gift of an extended charismatic family and a growing appreciation of individual cultures. You welcome this vitality as a gift and as a sign that prompt you to preserve and renew the spirit of your origins.

As Pope Francis pointed out to you not many years ago, your founder taught you to love the Church as a mother, and you offer her your missionary zeal and your life, participating in her exodus towards the peripheries of the world beloved by God, and living a charism that leads you towards the furthest, the poorest, those whom no one reaches.

Dear friends, thank you for all the good that you do. I assure you of my support in prayer and I cordially impart my apostolic blessing to you and your Congregation.