The power of education cannot be underestimated. In this resource, we highlight the ways Divine Word Missionaries have made education a central part of their ministry in every corner of the globe. We hope this information and these stories move you to a deeper gratitude for your own education and a desire to see every man, woman, and child granted access to the basic tools of learning and literacy.
Our call to educate, to teach and share the Word is made manifest in schools, universities, and seminaries. In basic literacy programs and vocational schools. We also do it through communication: books, radio, print media, social media, and more.
We often take for granted the fact that education is valuable. It is a universally accepted axiom, like the fact that the earth is round. But when was the last time you stopped to ask why education is valuable and why it is a uniquely human good that ought to be accessible to all people?
In simplest terms, education matters because it cultivates the beautiful gift of human reason, our capacity for intelligence, creativity, language, and consciousness that sets us apart from the rest of the created order.
Our capacity for reason gives us the ability to act as stewards of the earth and of each other.
For Catholics and Christians, human reason represents our share in the Divine Intelligence and in the Divine Word of God. We are created in His Image, capable of thought, wonder, and communion with nature and other people.
Opening up access to education offers people the chance to ignite their God-given capacity to learn and know about the world around them. It lets people access accumulated human knowledge about science, agriculture, mathematics, and the written word.
It opens doors to opportunity and unity that otherwise remain firmly shut. An illiterate person has little chance of opening a business, understanding the history of their people, or learning about distant cultures and far away places.
Most crucially, illiteracy is linked to a shortened life expectancy.
In the context of our Catholic missionary service around the world, Divine Word Missionaries are committed to the primary importance of education in the life of each human person and to offering access to education wherever they are called to minister and serve.
Here’s a look at some recent statistics and facts about the state of global education.
There are significant moments in human history when the opportunity for learning opened up for the common man and woman.
Perhaps the most significant came with the invention of the printing press and movable type by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439. Suddenly, one technological advance from a German inventor gave people who were not wealthy or elite the chance to learn to read and to own and read their own books. Education and literacy have been advancing to the most remote, impoverished communities ever since.
The past century has seen great strides in the global effort to improve access to education. However, far too many people remain uneducated or illiterate.
Catholic religious orders have a long history of promoting and offering education to the most vulnerable and marginalized. Long before governments and nations began to take responsibility for offering education to their citizens, the Catholic Church was the center of education and learning in Europe through monastic and cathedral-based schools.
The earliest centers of learning existed in Africa and Asia in the first thousand years after Christ. However, the word "university," from the Latin universitas or “whole,” was coined at the founding of the University of Bologna in Italy, the oldest university in continuous operation, in 1088.
When Catholic missionary orders first traveled to distant countries to serve people and spread the Gospel, many brought along a high regard for education. Missionaries have established parishes, hospitals, and orphanages around the world, but primarily they have established schools. Arguably, giving young people access to education does more to improve the lives of communities and countries than any other act of service.
When St. Arnold Janssen founded the Society of the Divine Word, he encouraged education in two ways:
Our capacity for reason gives us the ability to act as stewards of the earth and of each other.
For Catholics and Christians, human reason represents our share in the Divine Intelligence and in the Divine Word of God. We are created in His Image, capable of thought, wonder, and communion with nature and others like ourselves.
Today, education remains a key priority for Divine Word Missionaries, both for the people we serve through mission and also for those who wish to learn more about and support the work of missionaries and mission ministries.
School With a Difference:
An Option for the Poor
Learning Polish in the Fu
Shenfu Migrant Center
A Dream, a Plan, Now
Hope for the Future
Promoting Communication
in Toks Pisin
Divine Word Missionaries do more than talk about the importance of education. We see the need for education, and we act. Because of this, Divine Word Missionaries established, headed, or staffed hundreds of schools, predominantly in areas where education is uncommon or hard to access.
We work with local churches and local authorities to offer education to children who are impoverished or face serious social stigma due to tribal systems, caste systems, or disease. We also operate regular parish schools in places where Divine Word Missionaries are responsible for parish life.
We establish, staff, and teach at places of higher learning, like colleges and universities.
We offer theological training and formation in seminaries around the world, helping young men who have experienced a call to religious life fulfill that vocation. Our seminaries are also places where women religious and lay people can learn about counseling, pastoral ministry, the Bible, and Catholic teaching.
Odisha, one of the states served by the Divine Word Missionaries in India, has a high concentration of people that the Indian government categorizes as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. These terms refer to groups of historically disadvantaged indigenous people who are among India’s most impoverished and discriminated against groups.
Seeing a need for education for these underprivileged people, Divine Word Missionaries established Nabajyoti High School in Kerjenga, located in the town of Pallahara. Pallahara’s environment is not conducive for education. The area’s literacy rate is far below the state average. Poverty and underdevelopment of the area are the main causes of illiteracy, along with social ills such as drinking.
Today, Nabajyoti High School is educating 422 young people, with 282 boys and 140 girls in attendance. Three hundred and seventy-nine of these students live in boarding dormitories on campus because they live too far away from the school to travel back and forth every day.
Monthly updates connecting you with people and places around the world where our missionaries make an impact.
All branches of knowledge are important, but basic literacy is the keystone of learning. Once a person knows the basics of reading and writing and can connect speech to the written word, the light of learning has been lit in their mind and soul. The same is true for those who do not speak the language of the country they have ended up in. For many refugees and migrants, learning the new language can be a major obstacle to assimilation and comfort in a new land.
As a Catholic missionary order dedicated to the service of the Divine Word, promoting language learning and literacy has special meaning for us. Through the Divine Word, the world was created. Through education in reading and writing, new lives can be created for those who lack many of life’s advantages.
Divine Word Missionaries work to educate adults through things like language and literacy programs, opening up the power of words to all people.
As early as the 1980s, Divine Word Missionaries in Poland were ministering to migrants and refugees, mostly foreign workers who were employed in the auto industry. By the 1990s, larger numbers of migrants and refugees were arriving from Chechnya, Ingushetia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and a number of African countries.
Recognizing the growing needs of the many groups of migrants, Divine Word Missionaries decided to open a center for refugees and migrants.
We dedicated the center to St. Joseph Freinademetz SVD, the first Divine Word Missionary to China, whose Chinese name was Fu Shenfu (fu means “happiness” and shenfu means “priest”). We felt somewhat inadequate as we began to serve people from so many countries and cultures, but we took courage because of the words of St. Joseph Freinademetz: “The language that all people understand is that of love.”
The center provides assistance in several key areas: legal advice and assistance; help in finding employment; and Polish language classes. The center also offers pastoral ministry and catechetical programs. The center is busy all day long, buzzing with people and ideas.
In some parts of the world, Divine Word Missionaries offer young people and adults access to vocational schools, encouraging the development of new agriculture and technical skills that help people provide for themselves.
Skill-based education transforms people and their communities. By teaching people ways to farm or raise livestock, ways to access and use new technology, ways to create marketable goods, or ways to improve the chance of employment, Divine Word Missionaries empower those living in poverty to increase their wealth, health, and stability of life.
Teaching vocational skills and improving economic options for adults creates positive cycles of change, increasing the odds that the next generation of a children will have better access to healthcare, education, and more.
Deep in the depths of The Democratic Republic of Congo is a Catholic mission. It is located in Ngondi about 124 miles east of the capital, Kinshasa. Divine Word Missionaries has been active in this mission since 1984. Currently the mission community is made up of four Brothers and a priest.
Our mission is well known for the professional training center we operate for the local people. It is also a spiritual center that seeks to bring the Divine Word closer to the community. Today the center can accommodate 30 people. We plan to expand once our various projects bring in enough revenue.
A variety of training activities are already available, including workshops in a garage, a carpentry shop, and a livestock farm. Most of the students who come for the training are unemployed. The training center benefits local farmers by teaching much-needed skills to improve and grow their livestock. We organize a free monthly training program for cattle breeders and farmers. This program was the first step in proper training for the locals. The second step was to provide a much-needed veterinary laboratory in Ngondi. With a veterinary laboratory, important blood and urine tests could be run for the farm animals on the spot rather than be sent out of town where it could take weeks to learn the results
All of these projects are aimed to improve the skills of the people in Ngondi.
One of the primary ways that Divine Word Missionaries have served the global church since our founding in 1875 is by sharing stories of mission, creating bonds of knowledge and support between people that live far apart from each other.
This type of education is part of what we call mission animation, living out Christ’s call to go and make disciples of all nations while teaching others about the missionary vocation and the realities of mission life. Because of our call to work in 80 countries around the world, many of our missionaries are fluent in several languages. They use their ability to communicate with different cultures to translate books, give homilies, and serve the people of their new home country as effectively as possible.
Divine Word Missionaries produce many types of monthly print magazines, translate and publish books in new languages, run radio programs, and post regularly to social media. We use all avenues at our disposal to spread the Word through words with others.
Even this website is part of the effort to educate and communicate about the life of Divine Word Missionaries.
Father Frank Mihalic SVD was head of the Communication Arts Department at Divine Word University in Papua New Guinea from 1982 until his retirement in 1997. Originally sent to this South Pacific nation in 1948, Fr. Frank wrote the first English lexicon of Toks Pisin, a form of Melanesian Pidgin English that is one of the country’s three official languages. The Pennsylvania native would write many more Pidgin dictionaries and grammar books. He also wrote, in English, a history of Divine Word Missionaries in Papua New Guinea.
In 1970 he developed the nation’s first Toks Pisin newspaper despite having no previous journalism experience. Fr. Frank began his newspaper with no focus, no printing equipment and no media experience. He gained all three within a year.
Bishop Leo Arkfeld SVD agreed to print the new newspaper in the town of Wewak. Fr. Frank trained the staff for the first issue himself, and he focused on getting the paper into the hands of nationals.
We hope you have enjoyed learning more about the importance of education, the work that Divine Word Missionaries are doing to educate the most vulnerable, and the changes in people and communities that they see happen through the power of education and literacy.
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