The Mission Congress is a Missionary Congress with the general purpose of generating missionary awareness among Christians by helping to deepen one’s faith, acknowledge one’s right and duty towards mission work, and create awareness of mission needs, providing opportunity to give public witness of Christian faith, to experience the common bond of faith and the Catholicity of the Church, and to proclaim Christ to the world.

The late Pope John Paul II saw that these Congresses had great impact in conscientizing the people of their Missionary obligation as Christians and fostering missionary vocations both for priests and religious as well as for lay missionaries. The Pope then conceived the idea of Continental Mission Congresses to be held every 5 years in each Continent. He conceived it as an opportunity to review and renew our own commitment to mission at all levels.

In response to it, the FABC Office of Evangelization was asked by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples to see the possibility of holding an Asian Mission Congress, and the FABC-OE took up the challenge and held the First Asian Mission Congress at Chiangmai in Thailand in October 2006. Fr. Saturnino Dias, then Executive Secretary of the FABC-OE, explained that a Mission Congress is a public profession of Faith and that it is recognition and sharing of the story of Jesus in one’s personal life. It also provides an opportunity for us to appreciate the gift of faith, to deepen it and understand its role in our daily life, to share this faith with others, to experience the common bond of faith and the Catholicity of the Church, and to appreciate how the story of Jesus interweaves with the stories of other religious traditions.