Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Archives - Page 6 of 92

MSC World Projects 2026:OLSH Global Outreach 2026

Jan 15, 2026

OLSH youth ministry deep in the Amazon region of Brazil

The Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart are hard at work in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, an extremely remote area of the Amazon region in Brazil. Their work here is challenging, not least because of the inaccessible location, but is essential in serving rural communities who would otherwise be highly isolated.

This year, the Sisters are asking for our help in raising approximately €20,000 to buy a vehicle suited to the difficult Amazonian terrain and harsh conditions.

“This project aims to provide the sisters with reliable transportation to reach the parish communities,” Sr Renisa Augusta da Fonseca writes. “The vehicle would help Sisters with their social workwith disabled children, migrants and young indigenous people in this vast and under-served region.”

OLSH youth ministry deep in the Amazon region of Brazil

Rural Amazon

“The community of São Gabriel da Cachoeira is situated in one of the most isolated and challenging areas of Brazil, deep in the Amazon region,” Sr Renisa explains. “The Sisters’ mission there involves pastoral work in the parish and surrounding villages, catechetical formation for children, youth, and adults, visiting families and offering accompaniment to the sick and elderly, community support programs, and cultural dialogue among diverse indigenous groups. Currently, the Sisters do not have adequate transportation, which limits their ability to serve these scattered communities effectively.”

The purchase of the vehicle would greatly benefit the Sisters in their work with several groups, including local families and communities, indigenous families who need additional support, disabled children, and migrant families. It would allow the Sisters to travel safely and efficiently around the region, transporting essential items for education and pastoral and social aid, and would improve their ability to respond to urgent or emergency situations in remote spots. It would also encourage the “enhanced missionary presence of the Sisters, fostering hope, faith, and solidarity in the area”, says Sr Renisa.

Working with nature at the OLSH Mission Garden in Nzhelele, South Africa

At the Nzhelele mission in South Africa, the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart care for more than 130 orphans and vulnerable children by providing essential items such as food, shelter, clothing, school supplies and financial support, youth activities in drop-in centres, classes and workshops for children and their carers, regular care visits to the children’s homes, and working gardens to address food shortages and promote nutrition and healthy eating.

Working with nature at the OLSH Mission Garden in Nzhelele, South Africa

Tending the plants

This year, Sr Rotee Uriam, director of the Nzhelele project, is asking for our help in funding the repair and refurbishment of their dedicated mission garden. Located in the grounds of the convent, the garden was originally established by an Irish OLSH Sister, Sr Mairead. For many years, the garden has provided food for the children in the care of the Sisters, and offers employment to several local people who would otherwise find it very difficult to find work in what is a very remote area.

“The garden is a great teaching tool for the children to learn good agricultural practices and healthy eating practices,” writes Sr Rotee. “It has been in existence for many years – however, it now needs many repairs and updating.”

The OLSH Sisters in Nzhelele are working to raise a total of €15,000 to complete the repairs to the garden, and continue with this wonderful resource for the provision of nutritious food, local employment, and life skills. This will include repairs to fences and pipes, and the provision of water tanks and watering apparatus for the garden. “With a grateful heart, we thank you for all you are doing to help,” Sr Rotee says.

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MSC World Projects 2026:Sowing Seeds for the future in Cameroon

Jan 15, 2026

The MSC community in Cameroon is growing steadily, with a postnotiviate programme training MSCs in their theological studies and preparing them for missionary life. In this academic year, the programme is hosting 27 students and their three formators, which includes 10 new postnovices.

MSC Post-Novitiate students in Cameroon

The MSC Jules Chevalier Post-Novitiate Programme is located at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Each year, the programme welcomes students who have progressed from the Novitiate Programme and who are committed to continuing on their missionary journey. In previous years, our mission friends and benefactors here at the Irish Province of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart have helped to provide funding for laptops and essential equipment for the students.

“We really are grateful for this support,” writes Fr Bonaventure. “We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all the help we received so far.”

This year, the post-novitiate community are asking for our help once again in providing laptops for their new students, and they also have an exciting addition that needs our support. The community in Yaoundé are working on an agricultural programme to promote food supply and self-sufficiency for the students and their formators. In addition to their academic studies, the students are raising and caring for livestock such as pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and fish, creating a sustainable source of food for their community while also teaching and promoting valuable life skills that will have enormous benefit in their future missionary work.

Tending the soil

Care for Livestock

This year, the MSC community in Yaoundé are asking for our help in raising a total of €10,500. As well as providing laptops for new students, this will help the group to purchase and maintain essential equipment for their farming and agricultural programme, buying necessities such as protective work clothing and boots, farming tools such as shovels, hoes, buckets, cutting implements, and wheelbarrows, grain and seed, cleaning materials, and fuel.

From academic studies to agriculture, your support can help MSC students in Cameroon as their continue on their dedicated missionary journey to be on earth the heart of God.

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Welcoming 2026 at the Holy Family Care Centre

Jan 14, 2026

As another new year begins, we’re glad to share news from Sr Sally and our friends at the Holy Family Care Centre in South Africa.

The Holy Family Care Centre is located in Ofcolaco, in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, and is run by the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart with a dedicated team who provide residential care for up to 80 sick and vulnerable children. Many of these children are living with chronic illnesses such as HIV/AIDs, TB, and other critical conditions. Many of the children have lost their parents, and all are extremely vulnerable, so the Holy Family centre is a true home to them. Here in the Irish Province, our mission friends and extended Sacred Heart family are glad to be able to provide long-standing friendship and support to Sr Sally and the OLSH Sisters in Ofcolaco.

The new toddler room at the Holy Family Care Centre, supported by the generosity of our mission friends and benefactors in the Irish Province

Throughout 2025, our mission family and benefactors here at home have given invaluable support to our friends at Holy Family, with our Camino pilgrimage in September raising €13,000 for the children in their care. The generosity of our mission friends in the Irish Province has also contributed to a special new dormitory dedicated to the toddlers and pre-schoolers at the centre, who had previously been sharing a room with older children up to the age of 10. Sr Sally has sent us a wonderful video of the Holy Family toddlers enjoying their new space, and their smiles and songs say it all!

It hasn’t been all fun and games at the centre, as January has brought with it rain and floods that have blocked the road leading to the facility, certainly making life more challenging for the Holy Family team

As we begin to journey together through another new year, we thank you, with grateful hearts, for your continued friendship and support of our mission projects, and we wish Sr Sally and all the Holy Family community a happy and healthy 2026

MSCs celebrating Christmas around the world

Jan 8, 2026

What a great joy and blessing it is to see photos of Christmas celebrations from our MSC communities around the world!

2025 Christmas celebrations at the Fr Jules Chevalier Mission Centre in the Cebu District of the Philippines. (Image via the Facebook page for the Fr. Jules Chevalier, MSC Mission Center)

Noche Buena Baskets in the Philippines

December saw our brothers at the MSC Missions Office in the Philippines carrying on their annual tradition of spreading Christmas spirit, through the community’s Share a Christmas Basket programme.

Just before Christmas, MSCs and local volunteers worked together to pack care packages containing groceries and Christmas provisions for a phenomenal 1,000 families. Fundraising took place throughout December, with each donation for a Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) basket marked at a value of 500 Philippine pesos, meaning that 1,000 family Christmasses were transformed for a little over €7 per household. The community reached their goal of 1,000 baskets on December 17^th, yet donations continued to come in, and this continued generosity meant that extra provisions of rice could be added to each family’s package, giving the priceless gift of a happy Christmas to hungry families.

The MSC Missions Office in the Philippines posted their gratitude to all donors on their Facebook page:

“Thank you so much to all our generous donors and supporters of our Christmas Noche Buena Basket Project,” they wrote.

“Because of your kindness, we are now preparing for the distribution of Noche Buena baskets to 1,000 families. We are also happy to share that a pack of rice has been included in each basket, bringing more comfort and joy to our beneficiary families this Christmas.”

“From the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, thank you for sharing love and hope this Christmas season. May God bless you abundantly.”

“Nourishing bodies, spreading love”

An outreach programme also took place at the Fr Jules Chevalier Mission Centre in the Cebu District of the Philippines in the days before Christmas, sponsored by the generosity of the Lumongsod Family. The Facebook page for the Fr Jules Chevalier, MSC Mission Centre shared photos from the day, with the heartfelt caption, “Nourishing bodies, spreading love”.

Christmas in Fiji

Festive celebrations abounded in the MSC Province of the Pacific Islands, with their Facebook page sharing wonderful photographs from their Christmas gathering in Fiji (with photo credit to Martin Everi and Josephine Brown).

“The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart hosted a joyful Christmas celebration at the Sacred Heart House, Bhimji, with the Chevalier Family, friends from Holy Spirit and St. Agnes Parishes, Admin Staff, CTC Wainadoi, and the Kiribati Rabi Catholic Community,” the post read.

“The MSC community expresses deep gratitude to everyone for their continued support and prayers. Wishing all a blessed and holy Christmas season! Ametur.”

With the spirit of Christmas goodwill still in our hearts, we send our continued blessings to our MSC brothers all over the world, with prayers for all those they serve and the daily challenges they face. May God continue to bless us all on our shared journey, and may the spirit of the season continue to fill our hearts and homes as we begin a new year and a new chapter together in 2026.

Images via the Facebook pages for:
MSC Mission Office Philippines, Inc.
Fr. Jules Chevalier, MSC Mission Center
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart – Province of the Pacific Islands (with photo credit to Martin Everi and Josephine Brown)

“No-one left behind”: Critical aid in the Philippines throughout 2025

Dec 29, 2025

As we look back at 2025, we have received these powerful photographs from Fr Edwin Borlasa in the MSC Mission Office in the Philippines, documenting the relief aid in four regions following natural disasters earlier in the year.

“In response to a series of devastating natural calamities and fires across August and September, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart through the MSC Mission Office mobilized a comprehensive, four-part relief project providing critical aid to communities in Brgy. 160 Libis Baesa, Caloocan City; Brgy. Landayan, San Pedro, Laguna; and the West Riverside area of Tatalon,” reads the report from the Mission Office in the Philippines.

“In total, 492 families, who had lost their homes and belongings to severe flooding and destructive fires, received essential support.”

The relief operations were carried out throughout August and September in response to several crises that that left hundreds of families displaced from their homes and in urgent need of aid. “These events included widespread flooding from Typhoon Crising, destructive fires, and a severe flash flood from an overflowing creek,” reports the Philippines Mission Office. “The primary objective of the project was to deliver immediate relief, addressing the basic needs of the victims while offering a beacon of hope during their time of immense hardship.”

The first stage of the relief operation was initiated on August 2^nd, in Brgy. 160 Libis Baesa, Caloocan City, “delivering aid to 65 beneficiaries who were doubly impacted by severe flooding from Typhoon Crising and a devastating fire that had destroyed their homes”.

No-one left behind

The second stage of the outreach programme took place in the same barangay on August 7^th, “providing relief to 77 families who had lost everything in a large fire on the night of August 2, helping them secure essential supplies for the days that followed”.

“Everybody Happy! No One Left Behind!,” posted the Facebook page for the MSC Mission Office Philippines, Inc on August 7^th, with pictures of the relief aid in operation.

The third stage was carried out with the help of the TFUC group on August 9^th, in Brgy. Landayan, San Pedro, Laguna. “Here, 150 families whose lives had been disrupted by severe flooding caused by Typhoon Crising received critical assistance to help them cope with their losses.”

“Led by our devoted Provincial Superior, Fr. Edwin Borlasa, MSC, and Fr. Ben Roquero, MSC, the mission reached 150 families affected by the recent floods. ,” posted the Facebook page for the MSC Mission Office Philippines, Inc on August 9^th. “From our hearts to yours — thank you for being a beacon of hope in these challenging times! 💖”

The fourth and final relief operation was the largest, taking place on September 7^th at West Riverside, Tatalon, again with the assistance of the TFUC group. “This crucial mission assisted 200 families after an overflowing creek caused floodwaters to rise to a staggering height of five meters, completely submerging their homes and washing away their possessions,” the Mission Office reports.

Collective compassion and swift action

Through emergency fundraising, local support, and assistance from other MSC Provinces, the MSC Mission Office in the Philippines were able to act instantly to support the hundreds of families and individuals who had found themselves devastated by floods and fires, “significantly alleviating their immediate suffering and providing a foundation for recovery”.

“The missions were met with immense gratitude from the beneficiaries and stand as a powerful testament to the impact of collective compassion and swift action in times of crisis,” write the team in the Philippines.

Once again, we see the tremendous power of compassion and togetherness in action – none of this is possible alone, yet together, our MSCs across the world, encouraged by the support of our benefactors, can continue to change lives and save lives in the most critical situations.

Images via Fr Edwin Borlasa MSC and the Facebook page for the MSC Mission Office Philippines, Inc.