The Maryknoll Lay Missioners program is celebrating more than four decades since it was initiated.

Since it's establishment, Maryknoll Lay Missioners has had more than 700 people go into global mission. To this day, missioners are helping people in countries such as Africa, Asia and the Americas; working with them to help obtain a long-lasting, fair and compassionate life.

"The journey to become the organization we are now was not without controversy and struggles, but it was also full of excitement and dreams that have guided us as we have lived into our own way of being missioners, of being church in today's world," Marj Humphrey, the director of missions, said in a release recently issued on the Maryknoll website.

The Maryknoll Lay Missioners program was officially started in 1975; however, individual lay people had been working with Maryknoll priests, brothers and sisters for many years prior. It's believed the first two Maryknoll lay missioners date back to the 1930s with Dr. Harry Blaber and Dr. Artemio Bagalawis, who joined the ministries in the province of Guangdong in China.

Maryknoll priests, monks and nuns started exploring the idea of the program in 1969, an effort that was accelerated just three years later when the general chapter of the Maryknoll society encouraged international locations to enter programs that would incorporate United States Catholic lay people into their missions. Two years later, the council tasked Maryknoll's research and planning department with creating such a program. The Rev. Jack Sullivan was asked to lead the new program in 1975, and work began immediately to start recruiting people to join it.

"What has continued throughout the past 45 years has been our remarkable stories of accompaniment, solidarity, collaboration and fidelity to mission," Humphrey said in the release. "We remain profoundly grateful for the many people whose passion, commitment and hard work made Maryknoll Lay Missioners possible."