Search
-
October 9, 2025By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
WEBSTER – St. Joseph Elementary School fifth-graders who wrote to Pope Francis last winter were commissioned his “missionaries” Monday, along with this year’s fourth-graders.
Encouraging them and giving them medals of Pope Francis and Jubilee Year medallions from Pope Leo XIV were Bishop McManus and Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, Delegate for Catechesis of the Vatican Dicastery for Evangelization, which is overseeing the 2025 Jubilee Year celebrations.
At a prayer service in St. Joseph Basilica, Bishop McManus preached and led the commissioning ceremony, and blessed the missionary project’s student officers, adult leader, and medals, and helped Bishop Tebartz-van Elst distribute the gifts.
These students were commissioned missionaries because of a series of invitations and responses.
The story begins with David Dziena, vice president of publishing at Bayard Inc., whose office is at Assumption University in Worcester. Bishop Tebartz-van Elst came this week for Bayard’s 10th anniversary at Assumption University, and visited St. Joseph’s while here.
In 2024 Mr. Dziena had sought Bishop Tebartz-van Elst’s help to show Pope Francis Bayard’s Jubilee Year resources. Mr. Dziena asked David Perda, the Worcester diocese’s superintendent of Catholic schools, about taking the pope student letters.
Superintendent Perda figured Felician Sister Jeanne Marie Akalski, St. Joseph’s fourth-grade teacher, would help. He contacted the principal, Beth Boudreau. Last January Mr. Dziena handed Pope Francis the fourth-graders’ personal letters.
When the students learned that Pope Francis was sick, they prayed regularly for him and sent him get well cards, which Bishop Tebartz-van Elst delivered to him, Sister Jeanne and Mrs. Boudreau reported.
“These ‘little missionaries’ have long been dedicated to service projects, prayer campaigns, and creative outreach that have touched lives both near and far,” Mrs. Boudreau said.
Led by Sister Jeanne, they launched a project that invites others to participate in a mission inspired by Pope Francis, the principal said. In the school, cardboard cutouts of the late pope stand next to boxes for prayer petitions that the public drops there or mails in, and letters the students write to Pope Francis “in Heaven.”
“We want our students to see themselves as people who can make a difference – even in small ways like prayer,” Sister Jeanne explained. “They’re learning that … they can be missionaries of hope.”
Sister Jeanne kept her students from last year involved, and included this year’s fourth-graders in the missionary project.
They’ll meet monthly to pray for the prayer intentions collected and send “thank you” notes to people who included contact information, she told The Catholic Free Press. She said the petitions and “letters to Pope Francis in Heaven” are to be sent to Pope Leo to put at Pope Francis’ grave.
Some students were named “officers” of the missionary project. Their titles and roles are: the guardian of the mailbox, who receives petitions with care and respect; the readers of intentions; the messenger of hope, who shares the petitions with others; the giver of gratitude, who thanks petitioners; the keepers of the flame, who record petitions in a prayer journal, and the coordinator of compassion (Sister Jeanne).
At Monday’s service, Sister Jeanne told her students they were saying “yes” to a mission to help others and shape their lives to be more like Jesus. They are not just missionaries in name, but in action, she said.
For the commissioning ceremony, Bishop McManus asked them if they “promise to live with joy, kindness, and courage, bringing the light of Christ” to all they meet.
They responded, “We will, with God’s help” and thanked Jesus for calling them and asked him to help them listen to his word, share his love and “care for others, as Pope Francis taught us.”
For his homily, Bishop McManus said he wanted the students present (grades 1-8) to help him proclaim God’s word. He asked questions and took their answers and said they need to be missionaries to their families, at a time when many families do not attend Mass.
Bishop Tebartz-van Elst also encouraged the students to share love and faith and expressed Pope Leo’s gratitude for their letters and prayers for Pope Francis.
“This is an honor because this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” fifth-grader Ariel Corbin told The Catholic Free Press.
“This is a treasure to do because we’re, like, the first missionaries in the world to do this,” claimed her classmate Luke Zeglen. “I hope to go in the path of Pope Francis, which is being humble.”
“I feel honored to be a little missionary for Pope Francis because barely any people have a chance to do it,” said their classmate Christopher Bourgeois. “I hope to heal people that are sick.”
Prayer petitions can be mailed to:
Little Missionaries with Big Hearts: Continuing Pope Francis’ Legacy
c/o Sr. Jeanne Marie Akalski
Saint Joseph School
47 Whitcomb St.
Webster, MA 01570