By Mary Lackie

Msgr. Edward T. O’Meara, national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, said, “It is a very unchristian concept of Christian life to care just about my diocese.”

“The concept of universality is something intrinsic to our Christian faith,” he said, “and you do not understand your faith unless you understand this dimension—the flow of charity in the whole Church. We are a part of this whole exchange.”

Msgr. O’Meara came to Atlanta Monday to plug the society’s work and the need to enlarge the horizons of the people of God during a two-day meeting with ten southern directors of the organizations. Father Noel C. Burtenshaw, chancellor, is local director.

Less than two weeks ago, Msgr. O’Meara met with Pope Paul. In the pope’s address to 40 directors of the society, he pleaded, ‘Go to our colleagues and make the people of God aware of the dire needs of people in the mission areas-of their substandard living conditions, illiteracy, deprivations of equality and educational opportunity.”

“He spoke of his mission to Fatima,” the monsignor said, “and with tears in his eyes, the pope reminded us that the Church was striving to be the servant of these people. ‘We are one people of God.’ I was so impressed with his obvious concern with the world; with the people in the world, and the urgency with which he spoke to us. The desire for peace was something that possessed his total, entire being.”

Recalling the pope’s address, the monsignor said,” it is the mission areas of the world where peace is in greatest jeopardy. The handicap of the missions is their absolute poverty. The whole mission world needs funds.”

Contributions to the society are all spent during the year they are collected and spent entirely in the missions, the monsignor said. Missions range from Alaska to Latin America; Asia to Africa. “The society is not a relief organization,” he said, “it is the mainstay of the Church in existence and the missions use of the funds to meet the needs of their areas.”

Not long ago the Archbishop of Kampla, Uganda, visited the society’s office and met with Msgr. O’Meara. “He just came to say thanks for the assistance the Holy Father had sent him from offerings of the society. Without the funds, his church couldn’t exist,’ the monsignor said. “His diocese was inaugurating a program in the mission stations to stop leprosy in its first stages—to catch the disease before it wrecks and destroys lives—have you ever visited the leprosorium?” the monsignor asked, “I have.”

Contributions from America provide 60-65 per cent of the funds for the society, the monsignor said, and 40 per cent of the Mission Sunday offering to the society is returned to the missionaries of the United States.

Speaking of the role of the layman in the church, the monsignor noted that the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Legion of Mary were started by lay men and women. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith was founded in the 1800’s by a woman. Originally a French organization, it was approved in 1822 by Pope Pius VII.

“In 1922, one hundred years later,” the monsignor said, “a young Italian monsignor convinced Pope Pius XI that the society should be brought to Rome and become an organization serving the whole Church. That young monsignor later became Pope John XXIII.”