The Society of the Divine Word (SVD) are preparing the commemoration of the 150 years since their foundation in September 1875. Such a commemoration invites to a wide variety of celebrations and reflections on the history but also demands a cautious view of future perspectives. All over the SVD communities worldwide, the 150 years have become an important reason for memory and vision.

The SVD Generalate suggested among many other activities the organisation of a mission-oriented conference. It was supposed to be an international conference in Rome, in a missiological and academic approach. This means that many different contexts are to be taken into account, and it certainly should be a moment for reflection on the practices “in the field,” as it used to be called. The SVD Generalate commissioned the Mission Secretary Lazar Stanislaus SVD to set up a team for the preparation of such a conference. It is composed of Sam Agcaracar SVD (Philippines), Stephen B. Bevans SVD (USA), Ferdinandus Beki Doren SVD (Brazil), Andrews Obeng SVD (Ghana) and Christian Tauchner SVD (Germany) and started their consultations and meetings in May 2023.

The team worked on proposals to look at what the SVD may have contributed in the course of its history to the church and the world. The Society’s scientific commitment to anthropology and missiology as well as the dedicated work of missionaries constitute an important legacy. So the conference is going to reflect on the more recent central insight that mission originates from God and refers to our present-day world with all its joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties. In missiological terms, the perspective of God’s mission provides the central focus, as the SVD has taken this insight as its outline since the General Chapter 2000.

As a result, an “International Conference on Mission” is going to take place in Rome on 27, 28 and 29 of March 2025 (for further information, see the Generalate’s website https://svdcuria.org). The conference theme is “Missio Dei in Today’s World. Healing Wounds, Challenged by Postmodernity, Learning from Cultures, Inspired by Religions.”

The Conference in Rome is going to be slightly different from many academic conferences. There are certainly going to be keynote conferences on the central topics of God’s mission, postmodernity, cultures and religions. But there should also be reports on global experiences and contexts relating to the wounded world requiring healing, on migrations and ecology, on hope and synodality, on ethics and the other, on interculturality and on religions and cultural developments. These reports should be the matter of exchange among the participants in the conference, and all of these reflections are going to be discussed further in different groups composed of SVD and SSpS (Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit) missionaries.

In preparation for the March Conference, the wider group of SVD and SSpS participants started their reflections and exchange on the conference topics in three virtual meetings in October 2024, January and February 2025. Each of the virtual meetings dealt with one of the main aspects relating to God’s mission and setting the contexts. The papers of these conferences are published as the central section of this issue of Verbum SVD. They have served the participants already, but they are made available also to the participants at the Conference in Rome and obviously to the readers of Verbum SVD.