Benedict begins by recalling "that momentous and holy charge" found in Mark 16:15: "Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to all creation.
It established, according to Cardinal Fernando Filoni, that "the Church could no longer be linked to the reality of that moment where there were so many nationalisms and the desire to promote a certain colonialism through religion: a union that had to be broken.
He recalled the examples of Francis Xavier in India and Bartolomé de las Casas in the Americas and others to show what individuals can do in the service of God.
And to anyone who weighs these facts the realization must come as a shock that right now, there still remain in the world immense multitudes of people who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.
For the local priest, one with his people by birth, by nature, by his sympathies and his aspirations, is remarkably effective in appealing to their mentality and thus attracting them to the Faith.
[15] Some resisted the Vatican through inaction or argued that the protected legal status granted foreigners in China gave the missionaries a more secure position than any indigenous clergy could enjoy.
[4] Many nevertheless recognized that ordaining growing numbers of Chinese nationals to the priesthood was creating greater rivalry than rapprochement with their European counterparts.
[4] Later development of Catholic doctrine requires a revision of Benedict's assertion in Maximum illud that the missions targeted those who "lived in ignorance of God, and thus, bound by the chains of their blind and violent desires, are enslaved in the most hideous of all forms of slavery, the service of Satan".
[19][20] In 2017, Pope Francis noted the approaching centennial of this apostolic letter and called for October 2019 to be celebrated as an "Extraordinary Missionary Month".
He noted that in Maximum illud Benedict tried to promote evangelization "purified of any colonial overtones and kept far away from the nationalistic and expansionistic aims that had proved so disastrous".
He wrote: "The Apostolic Letter Maximum illud called for transcending national boundaries and bearing witness, with prophetic spirit and evangelical boldness, to God's saving will through the Church’s universal mission.