Comboni Lay Missionaries

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Comboni Missionaries

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MCCJ

The Comboni Missionaries are a Catholic missionary institute currently present in over 40 countries across all continents. Their mission is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly to peoples and communities who do not yet know it.

All the missionaries consecrate themselves to God for this mission: There are around 1,500 of them in total. The majority are priests, but a significant number are brothers, who participate fully in the same mission through a wide range of professional skills. Together, they strive to be attentive to the practical needs of the people to whom they are sent, particularly in the areas of human promotion, education, healthcare, communications and integral development.

Hailing from Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia, the Comboni Missionaries work primarily in contexts marked by poverty, marginalisation, injustice and both new and ancient forms of slavery. In these environments, they are committed to building vibrant Christian communities capable of acting as a catalyst for human development and social transformation. Their service is inspired by the hope of contributing to the building of a future in which humanity can live in harmony with Mother Earth, in peace among peoples, recognising their shared dignity as sons and daughters of God.

Founded by St Daniel Comboni in the mid-19th century, with the dream of bringing the Gospel and integral development to the peoples of Africa, the Comboni Missionaries now work on every continent. They are present both where it is necessary to establish new Christian communities and where there is a need to accompany and support young local Churches, still in the process of growth and consolidation.

Against the backdrop of the sharp rise in migration flows in our time, the Comboni Missionaries now carry out a significant part of their mission in the northern hemisphere as well, particularly in the human and social peripheries of major cities. In these settings, they share the Christian faith as a catalyst for fraternity, intercultural dialogue and social friendship among people of different nations, cultures and religions.

The motto that guided St Daniel Comboni, ‘Save Africa with Africa’, continues to deeply inspire the Comboni Missionaries. It translates into a commitment to empowering and emancipating local people and communities, so that they may be protagonists of their own Christian, social and human growth. This missionary style is expressed in a particular way through the formation of local leadership, both within Church communities and in development and social justice projects.

In the heart of every Comboni missionary, the ‘flame’ that Saint Daniel saw emanating from the open heart of Christ on the cross continues to burn; he witnessed this during a special moment of contemplation in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, on 15 September 1864: it is the love received from the Heart of Christ, the Good Shepherd, which still today drives the missionaries to reach out to the poorest and most abandoned. Wherever they are sent, this flame of love inspires them to enter into respectful dialogue with everyone, to share the faith and to foster paths of fraternity that rekindle hope in a reconciled and peaceful world.

The missionary charism given by God to St. Daniel Comboni is today shared by various groups which, together, make up the Comboni Family. For this reason, whenever possible, the Comboni Missionaries work closely with the Comboni Missionary Sisters, the Secular Missionaries and the Comboni Lay Missionaries. Each group lives out and embodies, according to its own specific vocation, the same missionary spirit that animated the Founder.

The charism of Saint Daniel Comboni is a gift to the whole Church and is open to many forms of participation. Part of the mission of the Comboni communities is also to share this spirit with the Churches of ancient foundation, so that they may renew their missionary zeal and actively collaborate in the proclamation of the Gospel and in concrete acts of solidarity, justice and peace, visible signs of God’s love for all humanity, without distinction.

The Comboni Family

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The Comboni Family is a community of people that originated around the person of a missionary, Saint Daniel Comboni. A man born almost two centuries ago, on 15 March 1831, in a small rural village overlooking Lake Garda, Limone.

It was from Limone sul Garda that Daniel set off to study in Verona, at Don Mazza’s Institute, and to understand, with a foresight that remains undiminished, how a distant continent like Africa needed to undertake a journey that began with itself, with its people, who have long been—and still are—plundered of their natural and human riches.

Daniel, therefore, called for a mission and a Church capable of uniting forces to save themselves through the salvation of Africa, its peoples, and thus of the Church itself. The same yearning that drives the Comboni Family today.

In that Plan for the Regeneration of Africa, which Comboni, through a charismatic intuition, began to dream of at the foot of Saint Peter’s tomb on 15 September 1864, a different world is envisaged, encapsulated in a motto: “Save Africa with Africa“. A motto that dreams of making people the protagonists of their present and future, starting from the daily realities in which they live, from the ancient and modern forms of slavery imposed upon them by an increasingly greedy and harsh Western wealth.

Comboni knew that the first instrument for salvation was knowledge, and he dedicated himself above all to education—of teachers and craftspeople as well as catechists, nuns, and priests—so that each person, within their own community, could find their way of living the Gospel, proximity, and sharing.

Thus the embryo of a missionary movement was born that brought together religious and lay people, men and women, local and foreign, capable of sharing needs and interests in the complementarity of an objective based on the awareness that each person is saved if all are saved, that each person can be what they are if others have the same possibility.

A vision of humanity that was not confined to the African continent but extended its reach across the whole of Europe, which needed to know that then-distant land and contribute to its salvation. Understanding the importance not only of education but also of information, Comboni conceived of a magazine: “The Annals of the Good Shepherd“.

Daniel’s era was a distant one—an era of the slave trade, of great discrimination based on colour and religious differences. For this reason, Comboni understood the need to unite the worlds of knowledge of his time: the civil, cultural, and political worlds, all striving towards a common cause. His dream transcended time; his dream remains relevant, not only because his words came true—”I shall die, but my work will not die“—but because even today we live in a time of slavery and supremacist thinking.

Daniel’s work saw the birth of the religious institutes of the Comboni Sisters and Missionaries, and more recently the Comboni Secular Missionaries and the Comboni Lay Missionaries. Thus, the yearning “If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for the mission” has continued to unfold over time, in the lives of those who have chosen to continue the Plan, to translate it into the journey of a family, the Comboni Family.

Men and women capable of broadening the geographical horizons of that dream, opening their hearts to serve the poorest and most abandoned, as Comboni said, present in Africa, Europe, America and Asia; in those frontier places, on the peripheries of a global world that is expressed as a common home, the home that the Comboni Family inhabits in every place where it lives its daily life.

We present you, therefore, our Family, a Family that follows in the footsteps of Saint Daniel Comboni, hoping that you will wish to be involved in a group of people that goes beyond physically being in the same place doing the same things, which means mutual sharing and welcoming the richness that lies in each person’s uniqueness, where the distinctiveness of another becomes a gift that helps one better understand one’s own identity…

A day to remember for CLM Kenya

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Neima Airport

February 19 will be remembered as a special day in the history of our missionary community

On this day, Neema Makori – as the first among the Kenyan Lay Comboni Missionaries – departed for a three-year mission to the Central African Republic. This event carries special significance – it is a sign of the growth and maturity of the missionary vocation of the laity in Kenya, and a beautiful testimony of courage, faith, and readiness to serve those most in need.

A missionary departure is not only a journey to another country. It is a response to the call of the heart, a decision to share life with the local community, to be close to people in their daily joys and struggles. Three years of service is a time for building relationships, learning a new culture and language, and growing together in faith.

Before her departure, Neema was bid farewell by fr. Maciek, Comboni Lay Missionaries and her closest family members. It was a moment filled with emotion, prayer, and gratitude. Together, they entrusted her journey to God, asking for the necessary graces, strength, health, and peace of heart throughout her mission.

We are proud and grateful for her witness. May this new chapter be a time of abundant fruits, mutual enrichment, and a deep experience of God’s presence each day.

Neima Airport

Neema – we are with you in heart and prayer!

CLM Kenya

Message of Pope Leo XIV for Lent 2026

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Lent 2026

Listening and Fasting: Lent as a Time of Conversion

Papa Leon

Dear brothers and sisters,

Lent is a time in which the Church, guided by a sense of maternal care, invites us to place the mystery of God back in the center of our lives, in order to find renewal in our faith and keep our hearts from being consumed by the anxieties and distractions of daily life.

Every path towards conversion begins by allowing the word of God to touch our hearts and welcoming it with a docile spirit. There is a relationship between the word, our acceptance of it and the transformation it brings about. For this reason, the Lenten journey is a welcome opportunity to heed the voice of the Lord and renew our commitment to following Christ, accompanying him on the road to Jerusalem, where the mystery of his passion, death and resurrection will be fulfilled.

Listening

This year, I would first like to consider the importance of making room for the word through listening. The willingness to listen is the first way we demonstrate our desire to enter into relationship with someone.

In revealing himself to Moses in the burning bush, God himself teaches us that listening is one of his defining characteristics: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry” (Ex 3:7). Hearing the cry of the oppressed is the beginning of a story of liberation in which the Lord calls Moses, sending him to open a path of salvation for his children who have been reduced to slavery.

Our God is one who seeks to involve us. Even today he shares with us what is in his heart. Because of this, listening to the word in the liturgy teaches us to listen to the truth of reality. In the midst of the many voices present in our personal lives and in society, Sacred Scripture helps us to recognize and respond to the cry of those who are anguished and suffering. In order to foster this inner openness to listening, we must allow God to teach us how to listen as he does. We must recognize that “the condition of the poor is a cry that, throughout human history, constantly challenges our lives, societies, political and economic systems, and, not least, the Church.”[1]

Fasting

If Lent is a time for listening, fasting is a concrete way to prepare ourselves to receive the word of God. Abstaining from food is an ancient ascetic practice that is essential on the path of conversion. Precisely because it involves the body, fasting makes it easier to recognize what we “hunger” for and what we deem necessary for our sustenance. Moreover, it helps us to identify and order our “appetites,” keeping our hunger and thirst for justice alive and freeing us from complacency. Thus, it teaches us to pray and act responsibly towards our neighbor.

With spiritual insight, Saint Augustine helps us to understand the tension between the present moment and the future fulfilment that characterizes this custody of the heart. He observes that: “In the course of earthly life, it is incumbent upon men and women to hunger and thirst for justice, but to be satisfied belongs to the next life. Angels are satisfied with this bread, this food. The human race, on the other hand, hungers for it; we are all drawn to it in our desire. This reaching out in desire expands the soul and increases its capacity.”[2] Understood in this way, fasting not only permits us to govern our desire, purifying it and making it freer, but also to expand it, so that it is directed towards God and doing good.

However, in order to practice fasting in accordance with its evangelical character and avoid the temptation that leads to pride, it must be lived in faith and humility. It must be grounded in communion with the Lord, because “those who are unable to nourish themselves with the word of God do not fast properly.”[3] As a visible sign of our inner commitment to turn away from sin and evil with the help of grace, fasting must also include other forms of self-denial aimed at helping us to acquire a more sober lifestyle, since “austerity alone makes the Christian life strong and authentic.”[4]

In this regard, I would like to invite you to a very practical and frequently unappreciated form of abstinence: that of refraining from words that offend and hurt our neighbor. Let us begin by disarming our language, avoiding harsh words and rash judgement, refraining from slander and speaking ill of those who are not present and cannot defend themselves. Instead, let us strive to measure our words and cultivate kindness and respect in our families, among our friends, at work, on social media, in political debates, in the media and in Christian communities. In this way, words of hatred will give way to words of hope and peace.

Together

Finally, Lent emphasizes the communal aspect of listening to the word and fasting. The Bible itself underlines this dimension in multiple ways. For example, the Book of Nehemiah recounts how the people gathered to listen to the public reading of the Law, preparing to profess their faith and worship through fasting, so as to renew the covenant with God (cf. 9:1-3).

Likewise, our parishes, families, ecclesial groups and religious communities are called to undertake a shared journey during Lent, in which listening to the word of God, as well as to the cry of the poor and of the earth, becomes part of our community life, and fasting a foundation for sincere repentance. In this context, conversion refers not only to one’s conscience, but also to the quality of our relationships and dialogue. It means allowing ourselves to be challenged by reality and recognizing what truly guides our desires — both within our ecclesial communities and as regards humanity’s thirst for justice and reconciliation.

Dear friends, let us ask for the grace of a Lent that leads us to greater attentiveness to God and to the least among us. Let us ask for the strength that comes from the type of fasting that also extends to our use of language, so that hurtful words may diminish and give way to a greater space for the voice of others. Let us strive to make our communities places where the cry of those who suffer finds welcome, and listening opens paths towards liberation, making us ready and eager to contribute to building a civilization of love.

I impart my heartfelt blessing upon all of you and your Lenten journey.

From the Vatican, 5 February 2026, Memorial of Saint Agatha, Virgin and Martyr

LEO PP. XIV