Every winter, in Catholic schools and religious education programs across the United States, children sit down with colored pencils and paint to tell the oldest story they know. What they hand in is not simply classroom artwork. Each missionary drawing is a small act of proclamation, a child’s own way of announcing the Gospel to whoever sees it.
For The Pontifical Mission Societies, that creativity is itself a form of mission. Through the Missionary Childhood Association, young artists are invited not only to learn about the Church’s global mission, but to help tell its story. Their drawings travel a long way from the classroom wall: onto Christmas cards, into a national basilica, and even into the hands of the Holy Father.
A missionary drawing is artwork that tells the story of the Church’s mission: the birth of Christ, missionaries at work among the communities they serve, or the simple conviction that the Good News is meant to be shared with everyone. This belongs to a much older Catholic instinct. Long before catechisms were printed, sacred images taught the faith to people who could not read: stained glass, frescoes, and painted icons all carried the Gospel through the eye rather than the page.
Among young people, it takes a particular form, and this is where the tradition is most alive today. What distinguishes missionary artwork from other religious art created by students?
Intentionality.
Missionary pieces are not made only for the family refrigerator. They are made to be shared, on behalf of and in solidarity with children living in mission territories, which turns a drawing into an act of communion.
In the United States, the most visible example is the annual MCA National Christmas Artwork Contest. Since 1933, The Pontifical Mission Societies have invited children in elementary schools and religious education programs to draw the Nativity, making Catholic mission art a fixed part of how young Catholics prepare for Christmas.
The form the artwork takes has changed with the times, even as the purpose has not. Children’s Nativity drawings first appeared on MCA’s Christmas seals, then on printed Christmas cards starting in 2005, and on digital eGreetings beginning in 2007, before the association launched today’s National Christmas Artwork Contest in 2013. A tradition that began with paper and stamps now reaches families by mail and by screen — proof that a child’s drawing of the Nativity travels as far as the medium will carry it.
The form the artwork takes has changed with the times, even as the purpose has not. Children’s Nativity drawings first appeared on MCA’s Christmas seals, then on printed Christmas cards starting in 2005, and on digital eGreetings beginning in 2007, before the association launched today’s National Christmas Artwork Contest in 2013. A tradition that began with paper and stamps now reaches families by mail and by screen — proof that a child’s drawing of the Nativity travels as far as the medium will carry it.
Participants choose from scenes at the heart of the Christmas story: the three wise men, the shepherds, or Mary holding the newborn Christ. Within those subjects, the interpretation is entirely their own.
That freedom is what makes the results so striking. Children draw the Holy Family with the faces, clothing, landscapes, and colors of the world they actually live in. Without ever using the word, young artists practice what missionaries have always practiced, proclaiming the same Gospel in the language of the place where it is received. This is how mission stories through art become genuinely universal: not by flattening cultures, but by letting each one recognize Christ as its own.
At the national awards ceremony each December, leaders of The Pontifical Mission Societies have described the young winners as missionaries through their art.
The Missionary Childhood Association (MCA) was founded in France in 1843 by Bishop Charles de Forbin-Janson, who invited children to pray one Hail Mary a day and offer one penny a month for children elsewhere in the world. Its motto has remained “children helping children,” and it is now active in over 130 countries.
In the United States, MCA works through diocesan mission offices, Catholic elementary schools, and parish religious education programs. Participation in the National Christmas Artwork Contest is open to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Many dioceses also run their own creative mission activities alongside the national contest, from local exhibitions to projects that ask children to build toys from recycled materials, as children in mission territories often do.
The Church teaches that mission belongs to every baptized person, not only to those who travel to mission territories or give financially. Children’s missionary art makes that concrete. A child cannot fund a seminary or serve in a mission diocese, but he or she can tell the story of the Incarnation in his or her own hand.
Following this, a key precept of the Missionary Childhood Association is that children are not merely recipients of philanthropic support or even missionary charity alone. They can be active participants in carrying the mission forward by sharing its story through their testimonies. When a child’s drawing becomes the Christmas card that carries the Gospel to thousands of homes, that child is a storyteller of the mission, not simply a beneficiary of it.
Encouraging young people to create is not a decorative addition to mission education. It is one of the most effective ways of forming missionary hearts.
It turns learning into ownership. A child who researches and draws a mission scene remembers it far longer than one who simply hears about it.
It gives children a real role. Rather than being asked only to donate, they contribute something uniquely valuable, appreciated by the wider Church.
It carries the message home. Artwork travels: to parents, classrooms, and Christmas cards, quietly introducing whole families to the Church’s global mission.
It speaks to a visual generation. Young Catholics grow up in a culture of images. Missionary art meets them in a language they already use fluently.
It plants vocations. Many missionaries and mission supporters trace their first awareness of the global Church to a classroom project undertaken as a child.
Supporting Catholic mission art among young people, therefore, does more than produce beautiful images. It forms the next generation of missionary disciples, and it strengthens the conviction that the Church’s mission belongs to them now, not only when they are older.
Each year the MCA National Christmas Artwork Contest turns thousands of drawings into something the whole Church can see. Winning artwork is displayed at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., and the grand-prize pieces become the official Christmas card of The Pontifical Mission Societies, sent to homes across the country and to the Holy Father himself, with a handwritten message on behalf of all those who participated.
That is the work of The Pontifical Mission Societies in miniature. Through the Missionary Childhood Association and its three sister societies, TPMS helps equip local Churches in mission territories worldwide while forming a missionary spirit in every baptized person, rooted in prayer, sacrifice, and charity. Mission education is not preparation for that work. It is part of it.
Teachers, catechists, and parents can find current contest materials and entry forms on the TPMS resources page. And supporting the Missionary Childhood Association sustains children in mission territories worldwide—the same children these young artists have been drawing for, all along.
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