Stories

By Michael Mitchell, TPMS-USA World Mission Sunday Director

Every year, bishops across Nigeria sit across from young men who want to give their lives to God and the Church in the Catholic priesthood. They are young men whose pastors have watched them grow in faith for years before recommending them for holy orders. The bishops listen carefully. And then, more often than the bishops can bear, they have to look a man in the eyes and say: I believe your calling is real, but I cannot accept you. There is not enough room, there are not enough funds, you will have to wait… 

It is not that the young men have been found wanting. It is that the dioceses do not have the money to send them to the seminary, to feed them, to house them through the years of formation that the priesthood requires. 

Fr. Augustine Ikwu, a priest from Nigeria involved in priestly seminary formation, said, “In many dioceses of the world, the Church prays for more vocations. In Nigeria, we pray for the resources to welcome the vocations God has already sent.”

The Nigerian bishops suffer watching the need in their dioceses for priests grow greater every year, seeing communities go without the sacraments, and knowing that the men who could serve them are out there, willing, eager, and unable to move forward to answer God’s call. This is the quiet crisis hiding inside one of the most Catholic countries in the world today: only about 5% of the young men who knock on the doors of the seminaries can be accepted due to limited resources. 

Fr. Ikwu adds, “One of the saddest responsibilities we face in Nigeria is telling a young man with an authentic vocation that we cannot admit him; not because he lacks faith, character, or ability, but because we simply do not have the space or resources to form him.”

Modern-Day Martyrs

Nigeria is, by nearly every measure, one of the most vibrantly Catholic nations on earth. Some 94% of Nigerian Catholics attend Sunday Mass. In the Diocese of Nsukka alone, the number of priests more than doubled in ten years, surpassing 400 priests in 2024. And yet, for all this abundance of faith, the seminaries can only house and train a fraction of the men who discern that Christ is calling them. And while this crisis unfolds quietly inside seminary walls, outside those walls, the situation is anything but quiet.

To become a Catholic priest in Nigeria’s missionary dioceses is not a path toward comfort or security. Priests across Nigeria have to be prepared to defend the faith even unto death. Seminarians are reminded that kidnapping, persecution, and killing are not hypothetical ideas. They are realities. Five Catholic priests were abducted and killed in the early months of 2026 alone. 

This is the context in which young men discern their vocations. They are not fleeing poverty by seeking the seminary.  Rather, they are walking toward danger and making of their lives a true sacrificial offering. The priesthood in Nigeria is on the frontlines. And the young men still come, in numbers that far exceed what the Church can receive.  But there is something we can do to help. 

What World Mission Sunday Can Do

The difficulties in Nigeria are precisely the type of difficulties that World Mission Sunday was designed to meet.  This October 18, we will gather in our churches to pray for these brave missionaries.  We will implore God for the graces and blessings that these courageous brothers and sisters of ours need to continue the work of evangelization. We will also take up a collection. The funds raised will go directly to the 1,130 mission territories, such as Nigeria, where the Church has just begun to exist, or where she is too young, poor or persecuted to sustain herself.  The collection will fund what these missionary lands need most: training seminarians, building churches, supporting religious sisters and brothers, and educating children in Catholic schools.

Fr Ikwu, speaking about the impact of World Mission Sunday, said, “When Catholics across the world support the missions, they are not merely funding buildings or institutions. They are helping to form future priests who will preach the Gospel, celebrate the sacraments, educate children, comfort the suffering, and bring hope to countless communities.”

On this World Mission Sunday, every Catholic who sits in a comfortable pew, in a country where churches are not burned, and where priests are not abducted, is invited to a simple two-fold invitation: pray for the missions and support them financially if you can.