The bishops awarded 453 grants totaling over $10.5 million that will support pastoral care, evangelization, and social ministry here in the United States and in three global regions, all made possible through the generosity of U.S. Catholics.
WASHINGTON - In June, the bishops on the subcommittees that oversee the various national collections met to review and award grants that support pastoral care, evangelization, and social ministry. The bishops awarded 453 grants totaling over $10.5 million that will be put to use here in the United States and in three global regions, all made possible through the generosity of U.S. Catholics.
The grants are supported through the following collections:
The Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe
The Collection for the Church in Latin America
The Bishops’ Emergency Disaster Fund
The Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa
The Catholic Home Missions Appeal
“These collections are a powerful way of following Jesus’ commands to seek the lost sheep and to care for ‘the least of these,’” said Bishop James S. Wall of Gallup, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on National Collections. “They are one way in which Catholics in dioceses across the United States can show solidarity and act together to provide tangible love and assistance to our neighbors in need, in this nation and around the world.”
Participating dioceses take these collections on designated dates, and #iGiveCatholicTogether also accepts funds for the individual programs. Three of the collections mentioned underwrite international ministry, while the other two have both domestic and international reach. The Catholic Home Missions Appeal assists dioceses and eparchies of the United States and its territories that are too poor or too small to provide ministry without outside help. The Bishops’ Emergency Disaster Fund allows dioceses to take special collections after major crises such as hurricanes and tornadoes and directs those gifts to the designated responses of Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities USA, and to repair and rebuild Church properties in dioceses struck by disasters.
The national collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe helps to rebuild the Church and restore the faith in this region after decades under communist rule. Grants from the collection will assist children and teens impacted by war in Ukraine through a day camp and a weeklong summer camp in the Diocese of Lutsk. Open to youths of all faiths, the camps are a ministry of St. John Paul II Parish in Rivne. With the support of a $15,000 grant from the Church in Central and Eastern Europe, these camps help young people build spiritual and emotional resilience through prayer, worship, sports, music, art and cultural activities. At camp they can relax for a time and experience joy, freed from the immediate threat of bombs. This program is just one of 241 grants totaling more than $5.8 million approved by the subcommittee for ministries in over 25 countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
The national collection for the Church in Latin America awarded 163 grants totaling more than $3.2 million, which includes assistance to two dioceses with long term recovery from disasters. One of the dioceses has also received assistance through the Bishops Emergency Disaster Fund, which provided nearly $233,000 to complete the reconstruction of two churches in Havana, Cuba, that were heavily damaged by a devastating tornado in 2019. More than $28,000 was provided to finish rebuilding a Catholic radio station and related buildings of the Dominican Priests and Brothers in the Dominican Republic that were destroyed by Hurricane Irma in 2017. The bulk of the grants for the Church in Latin America, more than $2.9 million, financed pastoral projects, such as training leaders for culturally sensitive evangelization of the Indigenous Garifuna people of Honduras. This outreach focuses on communicating the Gospel within the Garifuna worldview, connecting with their ancestral values and emphasizing dialogue, listening, environmental stewardship and conflict resolution.
The national collection for the Church in Africa awarded 48 grants from the Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa totaling $1,399,100 to bishops’ conferences in Africa to support pastoral activities of the conferences, member dioceses, and religious communities across the continent. With a grant of $21,100, the Daughters of Mary Immaculate, an order of women religious, will be able to launch a far-reaching re-evangelization campaign among 12,500 Christian families and their children in the Archdiocese of Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. The sisters are training 20 lay evangelists, equipping them with bicycles to reach beyond their immediate communities, and preparing them to teach others to also become evangelists. Their campaign includes many creative kinds of outreach, including a Christian band and street theater.
Through a special grant of $146,000, the Catholic Home Missions Appeal is enabling 19 home mission dioceses and Eastern Catholic eparchies to host the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage as it traverses four paths across the nation on its way to Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress. To accommodate the pilgrims, many parishes are hosting picnics and fiestas for hundreds of people, as well as feeding and housing the perpetual pilgrims who are making the journey to Indianapolis. These perpetual pilgrims are a small group of young adults who are traveling one of the four routes in its entirety, from May through July through countless communities across the nation. This grant helps ease the financial burden on mission dioceses and eparchies, and their parishes, so they can provide hospitality, as well as extra security, rental equipment, gasoline for diocesan vehicles, insurance riders, and other pilgrimage-related expenses.
“The value of all of these grants is far more than financial,” Bishop Wall said. “Each of them represents the love that followers of Jesus have for one another – especially those who are poor or marginalized. Lives and hearts are transformed forever as the Holy Spirit works through the ministry that these grants provide.”
For more information on the work of USCCB National Collections, please visit: https://www.usccb.org/committees/national-collections.
This article was originally published by USCCB on July 16, 2024.