The Welcome Home in Winnipeg, Canada, is a community that engages the Redemptorists of the Ukrainian Catholic Mission (Yorkton) of the Canadian Province, in collaboration with lay partners in mission, young adults, and lay volunteers in presence with and service of the poor. Beginning over 30 years ago, in 1989, the Ukrainian Canadian Redemptorists began a process of dialogue with Ukrainian Catholic young adults who challenged the Redemptorists to really live their mission of reaching out to the poor and the abandoned. The young adults declared: “If you will be our heart, we will be your hands and legs.” In 1993, The Welcome Home opened its doors, engaging lay men and women to live with Redemptorists and form a community together with the abandoned and the poor.
The article in the link below is about this mission. Through their life and ministry, The Welcome Home embodies the principles in the recent encyclical of Pope Francis, Fratelli tutti. Pope Francis urges us to be a Church of doors open to welcome all. He says, “we want to be a Church that serves, that leaves home and goes forth from its places of worship, goes forth from its sacristies, in order to accompany life, to sustain hope, to be the sign of unity… to build bridges, to break down walls, to sow seeds of reconciliation.” (FT, 276).
We invite you to read this article and give thanks to God for the witness to the Redeemer of these men and women, Redemptorists and lay, who form the Welcome Home Community, joyfully living the Redemptorist Missionary charism today!
Fr. Michael Brehl, C.Ss.R.
Some months ago, Scala News published the article by Teresa Ascensão & José Silva Oliveira, lay missionaries of the Most Holy Redeemer, who visited the Welcome Home on their trip.
