In 1843, the Bishop of Nancy, Charles Forbin Janson, motivated by letters and news received from China concerning the difficulties and certain death of children in those lands, established the Missionary Childhood and Adolescence. In doing so, he followed the Holy Childhood association established two decades ago by Pauline Jaricot. Prayer and charity were its foundations, under the board of trustees and protection of the Child Jesus. Pius IX, in 1856, asked that this institution be introduced in all dioceses, something that Leo XIII would do again in 1890. Finally, Pope Pius XI elevated it to the category of Pontifical Missionary Work in 1922 and a little later, in 1926, he instituted the Feast of the World Mission Sunday.

In Spain, the adhesion to the Work of Holy Childhood took place in 1852, with the royal confirmation of Isabel II, in a great ceremony in the church of Atocha in Madrid, with the attendance of the Cardinal of Toledo. On that occasion, the first medal of the Work was awarded to the Princess of Asturias, later renamed Infanta Isabel.

The Diocese of Pamplona was the second one legally established in the peninsula, promoted by Bishop Andriani y Escofet. On February 10, 1854 he appointed a Diocesan board , composed of several clergymen and some notables of the city. Times were not easy, neither politically nor economically, and the monthly fee of five cents was difficult to pay for many children.

The bishop who succeeded Andriani, Pedro Cirilo Uriz y Labayru, reorganized the diocesan committee in 1867 and tried to excite the zeal of his diocesans. In the bulletin of the diocese, instructions were published for the training and functioning of the Work of the Holy Childhood in the parishes, with the training of a parish committee , making use of charitable persons - especially ladies and young ladies. The Diocesan committee would be in charge of sending publications, holy cards, medals... etc. to the villages. And to receive the collections from registrations, sales of products and voluntary donations. Likewise, a report of the annual progress, feasts, "tender acts to which they have given rise" was required from the parishes. All the members would have a medal hanging from a white ribbon. Worship services were to be held before an image of the Child Jesus.

The successor of Uriz, Monsignor Oliver, reorganized the committee again, wrote several circulars to recommend and exhort the parish priests to increase the institution. Bishop Antonio Ruiz Cabal did the same, but it was Bishop Fray José López y Mendoza who, in 1917, appointed a new committee and set the instructions for the flourishing of the institution in the following years, under the direction of Canon Alejo Eleta. Priests who cooperated with the Work of Holy Childhood were granted various Schools and privileges. The following year, in 1918, a very long list of what had been collected in schools and towns of the diocese was published. In total there were 95 parishes with the institution very much alive and the intention was to establish itself in the large towns of Aoiz, Sangüesa, Artajona, Estella, Tafalla and Peralta.

We are informed of the growth in the data corresponding to 1924, published in January of the following year. The issue of parishes in which it was established was 182 and in the year 1924 no less than 89 had been founded.

In its development there is a transcendental date, with the constitution of the Secretariat of Missions in 1926, by mandate of Bishop Mateo Múgica Urrestarazu. Around that date the presence of the Work spread in the vast majority of the parishes of the Diocese of Pamplona.

Whoever wishes to see the cooperation in the annual collections, can do so by consulting the bulletin of the Bishopric of Pamplona of 1943 where the action is divided into three periods, the First period from its foundation in the diocese in 1854 until 1917, the Second period from its reorganization in 1917 and the Third period from the foundation of the Missionary Secretariat in 1926 onwards.

The expressions of festive celebrations, in the course of time, must be analyzed as a dynamic phenomenon with continuous changes. Some celebrations are invented according to the needs, others are reinvented, but all must be interpreted in their context, in this case that of the rise and propaganda of the missions, taking to the streets to make them more spectacular.

The parishes and towns, together with alms and prayer, carried out a procession specifically for the celebration of the Holy Childhood, especially in the second part of the twenties of the last century. Boys and girls dressed up as evangelizing saints, missionaries, religious men and women and all subject of indigenous people from different cultures, to which were gradually added other characters such as cardinals, the Pope and the Vatican Swiss Guard. In this way, it was intended to stage and visualize the action of Christianizing those peoples who still did not know the Gospel and, above all, its protagonists.

The second part of the decade of the twenties of the last century was especially remarkable in those very showy parades, although they lasted for a long time. In Pamplona, Diario de Navarra, published a very rich graphic report in an average a dozen photos of Galle, on June 14, 1927. The procession had been held on Sunday, the day of the same month and year, which the chronicler describes as follows: "we were amazed at the immense crowd of people that invaded the long route that the symbolic procession of the Holy Childhood - composed of thousands of children of both sexes - traveled from the parish of San Lorenzo to the cathedral. It was a manifestation of faith, which was welcomed and admired in all its sympathetic and representative value".

Towns and cities were not left behind. Thus, in Andosilla we know from the chronicle of Diario de Navarra at the beginning of May 1929, that there were projections for boys and girls, poetic declamations in the morning, reserving the afternoon for the parade through the decorated streets. In Irurita, the following year, on May 4, there was also a A , preceded by conferences with projections, the great work by several local volunteers to make the costumes of the children, a huge parade that stopped in the place for the photographer Felix Mena to take several pictures. Among the assistants there were many neighbors from the towns of Baztán and the liturgical part counted with the attendance of the Jesuit Dámaso Legaz.

The photographs and the hand program of a celebration of this subject are not easy to obtain. Thanks to the tenacity of the current parish priest of Sada, Mr. Íñigo Serrano, we have been able to have access to some beautiful snapshots, as well as to the only preserved printed program, which allows us to reconstruct what was the festive workshop of a distant May 12, 1929.

The town is near Javier and the devotion to the saint is evidenced by its seventeenth-century image and the reliquary kept in the parish church. Its inhabitants made two secular pilgrimages to the sanctuary, one, around the day of the Cross in May, with entunicados, similar to those of Ujué, very devout, and another later, in June, to give thanks for the harvest.

The declaration of St. Francis Xavier as patron of the works of the Propagation of the Faith and, above all, his nomination as patron of the missions, in 1927, together with St. Therese of Lisieux, were more than enough reasons to make that feast of 1929 something special and remarkable.

There is no doubt that the one who organized all that was the parish priest of the time, under whose direction was the local section of the Work of the Holy Childhood, Don Juan Segura. This priest was born in Pamplona in 1898, was bursar of Iracheta between 1923 and 1926, regent of Sada between 1926 and 1928, bursar of the same locality between 1928 and 1930 and, finally, parish priest between 1930 and 1936. From Sada he went as bursar to Irurzun where he stayed between 1936 and 1938 when he came to Pamplona as a professor at the seminar, where he died in 1955.

The festive workshop and the processional parade were announced for May 12, 1929 with this text: "Sada de Sangüesa. Great missionary day. Thanks to the enthusiasm and the work carried out by the very worthy and zealous parish priest Don Juan Segura, the Great Missionary Day will be celebrated in this town on Sunday the 12th ... with the attendance of the towns of Moriones, Leache and Ayesa". On Sunday, May 17, Diario de Navarra published two photographs of that missionary workshop .

The printed program of the workshop has been preserved by Manuel Apestegui Goñi. The large photograph on the façade of the Casa El Molinero, has been sent to us by its owner Francisco Javier Sagüés del Castillo, whom we thank for his kindness. Other shots come from other neighbors of the locality. I can only send a heartfelt Bravo! for those who have the sensitivity to keep these testimonies, so unique and didactic, of the local history.

The contemplation of the photos avoids any description, since they speak for themselves. There is no lack of religious men and women, the patron saints of the missions - St. Francis Xavier and St. Therese -, banners with very eloquent inscriptions and countless people of different races and peoples with their own costumes, most likely copied from the abundant missionary magazines of the time.

The festive program, puts the point of greatest interest in the procession that went through the streets suitably decorated Sada, with the following order: the parish cross, a picket of crusaders carrying the flag of the Holy Childhood, a tribe of redskins with their chief, a group of Chinese and Japanese surrounding St. Francis Xavier, children, African blacks with St. Peter Claver, apostle of the slaves, Japanese girls with their missionaries, St. Therese accompanied by first communion children, groups of missionaries, the Swiss guard with the Pope, the high school cardinal and the image of the Child Jesus with the parish clergy.

The author of the carefully taken snapshots was Javier Mena Zuasti (1890-1971), who had opened his establishment, at that time, on Avenida de San Ignacio and was the son of another photographer, Félix Mena (Burgos, 1861-Elizondo, 1935).