Children are also active and necessary agents of evangelization. ‘Your life, a mission’ is the motto of the day of missionary children, an international network of children who are trained in mission and share their contributions to help missionaries in their work with children.
Although Missionary Childhood is a worldwide initiative, the celebration of its day is not simultaneous in all countries. In Spain it takes place this Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (January 18 in 2026).
«Missionary is every baptized person, regardless of age,» says José María Calderón, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS). The objective of this day is to enthuse children, ask them to pray and call them to give alms to missionaries in distant countries. In this way, OMP wants to remind the children that they too are missionaries.
Spain, leader in generosity
Worldwide, in 2025, 14 million euros were raised, with Spain being the country that contributed the most money (around 2 million euros). With all this, more than 2,600 projects in education (55 %), health and protection of life (25 %) and evangelization (20 %) have been supported.
In 2025, Infancia Misionera España supported 473 projects, reaching 36 countries. The amounts sent to the missions come, to a large extent, from the collection carried out on Missionary Childhood Day in which accompaniment is offered to children from Advent and Christmas until the day, a video for the youngest children in which a child who wants to be a superhero finds in his missionary uncle a greater inspiration, a national drawing contest until February 6, catechetical materials and more resources.
A common financial fund for all missions
What Missionary Childhood raises around the world is made available to the Pope, in the Universal Solidarity Fund of Missionary Childhood.
The Holy See analyzes all the requests for help received from the missions and distributes the money in an equitable manner. The money is used to support children's projects carried out in the 1,131 mission territories that depend on the Second Section of the Dicastery for Evangelization - the Pope's missionary «ministry». In this way, it supports the work that missionaries do with children all over the world.
An adventurer in the Sahara
The adventurer Telmo Aldaz de la Quadra-Salcedo has extensive experience in collaborating with missionaries in the many expeditions he organizes each year around the world. Invited by the Pontifical Mission Societies, he visited one of these projects supported each year by Infancia Misionera. Mario León Dorado, he visited the Center for the Disabled in Dakhla.
In the Sahara, disability is often seen as a curse. In this center they try to remember that we are all loved by God, thus serving dozens of children with different disabilities. Telmo shared his experience there at the OMP press conference.
«Food is as necessary as feeling welcomed in spirit», says Telmo after telling how he was welcomed with a mass in which hundreds of people from Africa participated. With enthusiasm, he affirms that all the missionaries he has met have hope and are positive in their work, despite the difficulties.
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