In asking the Church to celebrate an Extraordinary Mission Month this October, Pope Francis is calling each one of us to live out our baptismal calling to carry forward the mission of Jesus Christ, says Fr Truc Quoc Phan SVD.

Fr Truc is the Mission Secretary for the Divine Word Missionaries’ AUS Province, a job which entails both living and promoting Christ’s mission locally and internationally.

“In his Message for World Mission Sunday, the Holy Father is very clear that the calling to mission is not just for those of us in missionary religious congregations, but for every baptised Christian,” says Fr Truc who is based in Marsfield.

“Pope Francis says, ‘Every man and woman is a mission; that is the reason for our life on this earth’. We are all invited to respond to this call to mission in our own way.”

Fr Truc was born and raised in Vietnam before coming to Australia to complete his SVD formation.  His first mission assignment was to Thailand, which is part of the AUS Province.

He returned from Thailand in 2013, after six years there, and was assigned as assistant priest to St Mark’s Parish, Inala, in Brisbane, as well as assistant priest to the Vietnamese community in Queensland, before being appointed as Mission Secretary for the Province in 2014.

Fr Truc says he enjoys working with others in the promotion of mission, including the Vocations Director, other confreres and the different ministries in parishes.

“I like visiting the confreres to see how they are working and how mission is coming alive in our parishes and ministries and seeing if there are ways in which I can help them out and also learn from them,” he says.

He says he also draws from the many valuable experiences in mission that he had during his time in Thailand.

Fr Truc says his life in Thailand, a strongly Buddhist nation, was not without challenges, but God helped him to meet them and to grow through them.

Placed in charge of four parishes in northern Thailand, Fr Truc worked with the people to help meet their needs, including building new churches and repairing old ones, creating parish councils and working with the local Buddhist communities.

“It was a blessing for me,” he says. “I love the culture, I love the people and the work, and I am loved by the people too. God has done great things in me, through the Thai people; much more than I ever expected.

“When I first set out, I didn’t expect that I could do anything like what I did there. God works through us. It’s incredible.”

PHOTO: Fr Truc with parishioners during his time as a missionary in Thailand.