Catholics across Bangladesh are engaging in month-long activities undertaken by the local Church to observe and celebrate Extraordinary Missionary Month.

While observing World Mission Sunday in 2017, Pope Francis set October 2019 as the month to mark the 100th anniversary of Pope Benedict XV’s apostolic letter Maximum Illud in 1919, a document on the Church’s mission to bring to the world the salvation of Jesus Christ.

The theme for this special month is “Baptized and Sent: The Church of Christ on Mission in the World.”

The Bangladeshi Church, consisting of two archdioceses and six dioceses with about 350,000 Bengali and ethnic indigenous Catholics, has outlined a series of programs to observe the “missionary nature” of the Church targeting faithful of all ages — children, young, adults and elderly.

The missionary month holds special significance for Bangladesh, where the Church’s advent and growth are credited to the extraordinary contributions of missionaries and martyrs, said Bishop Shorot F. Gomes, auxiliary bishop of Dhaka.