Missionary news agency staff pleads for Pope to reverse decision to close operation

December 21, 2015

Employees of the Missionary International Service News Agency (MISNA) have appealed to Pope Francis to save their agency, after being notified that the agency will be shut down because of budgetary constraints.

MISNA has provided reports on mission activities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for 20 years. But the agency reports that the missionary congregations that have sponsored this work—the Comboni, Consolata, and Xaverian missionaries, along with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions—have decided to end the subsidies. The decision is a blow to eleven lay employees, who have been given less than a month’s notice that their jobs will be eliminated. “Said simply: the MISNA’s financial backers-– missionary organizations themselves-– pulled the organization’s funding and fired the staff at Christmas,” the staff laments.

The closing of MISNA “would be a terrible mistake,” the staff argues in its plea to the Pontiff, because a voice for the Church in mission territories would be stilled. The staff members say that they “begged in every possible way for our owners to sit at a table with us to find a solution,” to no avail.

 

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Further information:

• Dear Francis, Hear Our Call (MISNA)