The catalytic combustion of methane with stoichiometric amounts of oxygen to CO2 and H2O has been studied over samarium based high surface area perovskite type oxides SmFe1-xAlxO3 (x = 0.00, 0.50 0.95) prepared via a new sol-gel method. A comparison to other lanthanum perovskites prepared by the ceramic method shows higher catalytic activity for SmFeO3 and SmFe0.5Al0.5O3 samples.