‘An immense emotion’: Andean missionary nun meets her former bishop, now Pope Leo XIV
Mother María Priscila, a Missionary of Jesus, Word and Victim, described her reunion with Pope Leo XIV at a prayer meeting in Zaña, Peru, as an immense emotion. She first met him in 2014, when he was apostolic administrator and visited Incahuasi, where she had served. Priscila serves a remote Quechua-speaking parish in Cañaris and leads it because of a shortage of priests. Her congregation ministers in isolated communities in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America.
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Mother María Priscila, a missionary sister serving in Peru’s remote Andes, met Pope Leo XIV during his Nov. 14 visit to Zaña and described seeing her former bishop again as “an immense emotion.” She said he encouraged her to continue serving communities with few priests.
Sister María Priscila belongs to the Missionaries of Jesus, Word and Victim, a congregation that serves isolated areas in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America. She is superior of her community and also leads St. John the Baptist Parish in Cañaris, a Quechua-speaking town in the Diocese of Chiclayo, because of a shortage of priests.
She recalled meeting Robert Prevost in Incahuasi in 2014, after he was appointed apostolic administrator. Before becoming pope, he visited the diocese’s high Andean communities despite the difficult terrain, she said.
The reunion took place after a prayer meeting at the shrine of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo in Zaña. The gathering marked the close of a jubilee year commemorating 300 years since the saint’s canonization.
After Sister María Priscila gave testimony at the meeting, Leo asked where she was working. She said he congratulated her and urged her to keep working in communities that needed pastoral care.
In her testimony, she recalled Prevost speaking to children about Christ and sharing moments with local communities with simplicity and humanity. She said those encounters had strengthened her sense of belonging to a Church that stays close to people and serves their evangelization.
Lay leadership and evangelization in remote Catholic communities
Lay leadership is especially important in remote Catholic communities, where a priest may not be present regularly, but it is not merely a substitute for clergy. Catholic teaching presents lay people as active participants in the Church’s mission: they sustain prayer and catechesis locally, help build community, and carry the Gospel into everyday life. Their service is meant to work in communion with bishops and priests, whose ordained ministry remains distinct.
When a community lacks a resident priest, lay people may face a heightened responsibility to keep its faith life active. John Paul II points to practical forms of service: helping lead morning and evening prayer, serving as catechists, and contributing to a pastoral plan or vision. He presents these not as lesser or merely administrative tasks, but as ways the baptized witness to and serve the Church’s mission.
Catechists can have a particularly broad role. In one account of local Church life, their service includes teaching the faith, helping with prayer and music, working with small groups, preparing people to receive the sacraments, training other catechists, and assisting with parish or outstation administration. These examples show that catechesis is not simply the transmission of information: it can help hold together the community’s prayer, formation, and pastoral life.
“The catechists in many islands are not only trained to teach, but also to lead the community in prayer and to evangelize beyond the bounds of the Catholic community.”
This description is significant because it joins internal formation with outward mission. Lay leaders help a community pray and grow in faith, while also helping it reach people beyond its own membership. The same document notes that faith in traditional cultures may be communicated through stories, preaching, spoken prayer, song, and dance. It therefore calls for appropriate courses, programmes, and retreats to support this culturally grounded work.
The Church’s call to lay responsibility should not be interpreted as a competition with priestly ministry, or as making the distinction between lay and ordained service disappear. John Paul II describes priestly leadership and lay responsibility as complementary: they should be distinguished but not separated, and should work together in harmony. He also rejects the idea that increased lay responsibility is only a response to a shortage of priests, describing it instead as the work of the Holy Spirit.
That balance matters in remote settings. Lay leaders can make local faith life more continuous, but their service belongs within the communion of the Church. In the account of evangelization in the Pacific, bishops remain the principal agents of evangelization in their dioceses, with priests and religious as close collaborators and lay people contributing according to their vocation.
The sources also distinguish lay service from the clerical role. The participation of lay people in catechesis, prayer, pastoral planning, and community service is described as flowing from Baptism and Confirmation, not as an expansion of clerical identity. The practical implication is that remote communities need well-formed lay leaders and supportive clergy, not a blurred understanding of who serves in which capacity. The available texts affirm this distinction and communion, though they do not provide a complete account of the rules governing every liturgical or sacramental task.
Lay evangelization is not limited to ministries inside the parish or chapel. John Paul II emphasizes that the characteristic contribution of lay people includes bringing the Gospel into family life, work, politics, culture, professional life, and intellectual life. Their ordinary conduct and decisions can therefore be part of the Church’s mission in places that clergy may not regularly reach.
This outward dimension complements local catechesis and prayer. The Congregation for the Clergy describes lay evangelization as beginning with the witness of daily life, lived in conformity with the Gospel, and also calls the laity to serve the parish community. Together, these sources suggest that remote evangelization has two closely connected settings: the gathered community, where people are formed and supported in faith, and daily life, where Catholics make the Gospel visible to others.
Evangelization also involves explaining the faith, not only embodying it. John Paul II urged adult catechesis so that the faithful could deepen their understanding and express the faith’s liberating truth. In remote communities, this points to the value of ongoing formation rather than placing the whole burden on a small number of experienced catechists. The same address insists that missionary zeal should not remain confined to a few specialists, but should call forth the whole People of God.
The sources do not portray lay leadership as something that should be improvised or unsupported. They call for training in catechesis, programmes of renewal, and spiritual formation; they also stress that catechists need the knowledge that bishops and priests are available to offer spiritual and moral support. Such formation can help leaders communicate the faith clearly, guide communal prayer, and pass on their skills to others.
Cultural understanding is part of that work. The account of Oceania commends oral forms of communication such as storytelling, song, and dance, while also calling for the presentation of Christ to people whose faith has weakened under social pressures. Inculturation—the expression of the Gospel within a culture—does not mean treating every cultural practice as beyond question. John Paul II says that some customs may need to be questioned or tempered, even as education in the faith should strengthen what is good in traditional ways.
Thus, lay leadership in remote communities is best understood as locally rooted service in communion with the wider Church. It helps a community pray, learn, and remain connected to its faith; it also equips Catholics to bear witness beyond the community. Its effectiveness depends not simply on filling gaps in clerical presence, but on mature formation, appropriate support, respect for the distinct roles of laity and clergy, and a confident proclamation of Jesus Christ in ways people can understand.