Month: February 2024

ROME (CNS) – In an age when even one’s most intimate thoughts and feelings can become fodder for social media, Lent is a time to cast aside appearances and to find God at work in the depths of the heart, Pope Francis said.

Without realizing it, Christians have become immersed “in a world in which everything, including our emotions and deepest feelings, has to become ‘social,'” the pope said while celebrating Mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome to mark the beginning of Lent Feb. 14.

Today, “even the most tragic and painful experiences risk not having a quiet place where they can be kept,” he said. “Everything has to be exposed, shown off, fed to the gossip mill of the moment.”

Dressed in purple vestments to mark the Lenten season, Pope Francis said Lent is a chance for Christians to ensure their relationship with God “is not reduced to mere outward show.”

Lent “immerses us in a bath of purification,” he said. “It means looking within ourselves and acknowledging our real identity, removing the masks we so often wear, slowing the frantic pace of our lives and embracing the truth of who we are.”

The Lenten practices of “almsgiving, prayer and fasting are not mere external practices; they are paths that lead to the heart, to the core of the Christian life,” he added, encouraging Christians to “love the brothers and sisters all around us, to be considerate to others, to feel compassion, to show mercy, to share all that we are and all that we have with those in need.”

The liturgy began with a prayer at the nearby Church of St. Anselm, which is part of a Benedictine monastery on Rome’s Aventine Hill. Chanting the litany of saints, cardinals, joined by Benedictine and Dominican religious, then processed to the Basilica of Santa Sabina – considered the mother church of the Dominican order – for Mass.

Pope Francis, who has regularly used a wheelchair since May 2022, did not participate in the procession. In the basilica the pope blessed the ashes with holy water, praying that “we recognize that we are dust and to dust we will return.”

The pope received ashes from Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, who also was the Mass’s main celebrant at the altar.

In his homily, Pope Francis said “the ashes placed on our head invite us to rediscover the secret of life.”

“We are ashes on which God has breathed his breath of life,” he said. ” And if, in the ashes that we are, the fire of the love of God burns, then we will discover that we have indeed been shaped by that love and called to love others in turn.”

Pope Francis also recalled the day’s Gospel reading from St. Matthew, in which Jesus tells his disciples not to make a public show of their prayer but to rather “go to your inner room” to pray.

Jesus’ message “is a salutary invitation for us, who so often live on the surface of things, who are so concerned to be noticed, who constantly need to be admired and appreciated,” he said.

The pope urged Christians to “return to the center of yourself,” where “so many fears, feelings of guilt and sin are lurking.”

“Precisely there the Lord has descended in order to heal and cleanse you,” he said. “Let us enter into our inner chamber: There the Lord dwells, there our frailty is accepted and we are loved unconditionally.”

Pope Francis suggested that during Lent Christians make space to incorporate silent adoration into their lives, as practiced by Moses, Elijah, Mary and Jesus.

“Have we realized that we’ve lost the meaning of adoration? Let us return to adoration,” he said.

Like St. Francis of Assisi, Christians should “strip ourselves of worldly trappings and return to the heart, to what is essential,” the pope said. “Let us acknowledge what we are: dust loved by God.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – St. María Antonia de Paz Figueroa, known as Mama Antula, devoted herself completely to helping others experience God’s closeness and compassion, Pope Francis said after he declared the 18th-century consecrated laywoman a saint.

By letting her heart and life be “touched” and “healed” by Christ, he said, “she proclaimed him tirelessly her whole life long, for she was convinced, as she loved to repeat: ‘Patience is good, but perseverance is better.'”

“May her example and her intercession help us to grow according to the heart of God, in charity,” the pope said in his homily after proclaiming her a saint during a Mass Feb. 11 in St. Peter’s Basilica.

St. María Antonia de Paz Figueroa is Argentina’s first female saint. She was closely tied to the Jesuits and continued to lead Ignatian spiritual exercises in Argentina after the expulsion of the order.

Argentine President Javier Miliei was present at the Mass and was to have a private meeting with the pope Feb. 12. At the end of the Mass, the two shook hands, spoke briefly, smiled and laughed. The president, who has made disparaging remarks about the pope in the past, leaned down and gave a big hug to the pope, who was seated in his wheelchair.

Claudio Perusini, whose unexplained recovery from a severe stroke became the second miracle attributed to the new saint, also was present. He has known the pope since he was 17 and he, his wife and two adult children brought the offertory gifts to the pope during the Mass.

Sickness and healing were the key themes in Pope Francis’ homily during the Mass Feb. 11, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the World Day of the Sick.

Reflecting on the day’s readings, which included St. Mark’s account of Jesus’ “cleansing of a leper,” the pope spoke about other forms of “leprosy” that lead some people, even Christians, to ostracize and scorn others.

Those who were afflicted with Hansen’s disease during Jesus’ time were further wounded by ostracism and rejection because of fear, prejudice and a false religiosity, the pope said.

People were afraid of contracting the disease and they were prejudiced by believing those who were ill were being punished by God for some sin they had committed and, therefore, deserving of their fate, the pope said.

Also, the belief that even slight contact with someone with leprosy made one “impure” is an example of false or “distorted religiosity,” which “erects barriers and buries pity,” he said.

Fear, prejudice and false religiosity represent “three ‘leprosies of the soul’ that cause the weak to suffer and then be discarded like refuse,” he said.

Many people suffering today also are scorned and discarded because of so many “fears, prejudices and inconsistencies even among those who are believers and call themselves Christians,” he said.

The way to tear down those barriers and cure new forms of “leprosy,” he said, is with the same style as Jesus, which is to draw near to those who are shunned to touch and heal them.

Jesus responds to the leper’s cry for help “knowing full well that in doing so he will in turn become a ‘pariah,'” the pope said.

“Oddly enough, the roles are now reversed: once healed, the sick person will be able to go to the priests and be readmitted to the community; Jesus, on the other hand, will no longer be able to enter any town,” he said.

Jesus could have avoided touching the man and instead perform “a distance healing,” he said. “Yet that is not the way of Christ. His way is that of a love that draws near to those who suffer, enters into contact with them and touches their wounds.”

Christians must reflect whether they, like Jesus, are able to draw near and be a gift to others, the pope said. The faithful should ask if they “withdraw from others and think only of ourselves” or believe “the problem is always and only other people.”

This “leprosy of the soul,” he said, is “a sickness that blinds us to love and compassion, one that destroys us by the ‘cankers’ of selfishness, prejudice, indifference and intolerance.”

“Once we let ourselves be touched by Jesus, we start to heal within, in our hearts. If we let ourselves be touched by him in prayer and adoration, if we permit him to act in us through his word and his sacraments, that contact truly changes us,” he said.

“Thanks to the love of Christ, we rediscover the joy of giving ourselves to others, without fears and prejudices, leaving behind a dull and disembodied religiosity and experiencing a renewed ability to love others in a generous and disinterested way,” he said.

Later, after reciting the Angelus prayer with visitors in St. Peter’s Square, the pope recalled the day’s celebration of Our Lady of Lourdes and World Day of the Sick.

“The first thing we need when we are sick is the closeness of loved ones, health care workers and, in our hearts, the closeness of God,” he said. “We are all called to be close to those who suffer, to visit the sick” the same way Jesus did with “closeness, compassion and tenderness.”

“We cannot be silent about the fact that there are so many people today who are denied the right to care, and, therefore, the right to life!” he said.

In those places where people live in extreme poverty or war zones, he said, “fundamental human rights are violated there every day! It is intolerable. Let us pray for the tormented Ukraine, for Palestine and Israel, let us pray for Myanmar and for all war-torn peoples.”

(OSV News) – Only about 15% of U.S. adults who were raised Catholic said they had remained practicing Catholics attending weekly Mass into adulthood, according to data from the General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

But what were some of the things that distinguished the families of those children who remained practicing Catholics as adults from those who left the faith entirely? Seeking answers to this question, researchers at Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate and the Peyton Institute for Domestic Church Life conducted the “Future Faithful Families Project” study.

The interviews for the study were conducted with 28 individuals from June 2021 to February 2023 and included qualifying participants from past CARA surveys. The study noted “a greater lack of response from the adult children than the parents who had been interviewed,” but added that “it is well known in the social science research fields that it is often easier to recruit participation from older adults than young adults.”

The study found that participants from these families generally described their households as “warmer and more affectionate than the average family.” Most of the participants also indicated “very good communication” within the family.

Another shared thread among those interviewed was having rituals of meals eaten together and prayer, with most indicating that faith was a part of family routines regardless of the routines themselves.

Additionally, all participants emphasized the importance of weekly Mass attendance and nearly all participants reported doing service work and giving to charity, with many doing so through their parish or a church organization.

Mark Gray, director of CARA Catholic Polls, co-wrote the study along with Greg Popcak, co-executive director of the Peyton Institute for Domestic Church Life. Gray told OSV News that while the findings from these qualitative interviews were not meant to be taken as some sort of “checklist” of things to keep one’s child Catholic, parents could gain insight from the common responses.

For these families, he said, “their faith wasn’t just something that they went and did on Sunday morning; their faith was present in the household. It was present every day. It came out in conversations about the faith, with prayer, with things that are in the home.”

He also noted that when children would come to the parents with doubts about the faith, most of the parents “went on a journey with their children and said, ‘Well, let’s see why the church teaches this,'” as opposed to strictly shutting down questioning of the church’s teachings.

“It’s a lot of discussion, working through things, thinking about things rather than being this overbearing parental force,” he said.

The study also included an analysis of existing data from the General Social Survey, or GSS, going back to the 1970s, which showed a marked decline in the number of U.S. adults who were raised Catholic and stayed Catholic while still attending Mass weekly.

In the 1970s, “an average of 36% of those who were raised Catholic remained Catholic as adults and attended Mass weekly (peaking at 40% in 1977).” GSS data later showed “this average percentage declined to 32% in the 1980s, 25% in the 1990s, and 21% in the 2000s. In the 2010s, this averaged 15% and was 14% in the 2018 study.”

These numbers exclude those who converted to Catholicism but were not raised Catholic. The study also notes the large number of Catholics who have immigrated to the U.S.

Focusing on the 51% of U.S. adults who were raised Catholic and had remained so between 2010 to 2018, there were some commonalities. Among weekly Mass attendees who had remained Catholic, 81% were “more likely to have been living with both parents at age 16” compared to the 72% who attend Mass less often than weekly or the 63% who left the Catholic faith.

Gray said that the families they spoke with referenced things that “any parent can do,” noting the importance of the child to see their parent be “Catholic every day of the year, not just on Sundays” and for the parent “to listen to their children and have conversations with them, and guide them through what the faith teaches and why the faith teaches it.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The importance of women in the Catholic Church cannot be “reduced” to the question of ministry, Pope Francis told members of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Pope Francis made his remarks Feb. 8 in the context of explaining how every attempt at church reform, like the Second Vatican Council’s reform of the liturgy, must be motivated by “spousal fidelity: the church-bride will always be more beautiful the more she loves Christ the bridegroom, to the point of belonging to him totally, to the point of conforming to him fully.”

Mentioning the church as the bride of Christ, the pope added to his prepared text: “I want to say one thing about women’s ministry. The church is woman, the church is mother, the church has its figure in Mary, and the church-woman, whose figure is Mary, is greater than Peter; that is, it is something else.”

“One cannot reduce everything to ministry,” he said. “The woman in herself has a very great significance in the church-as-woman, without reducing it to ministry. This is why I said that every instance of reform in the church is always a question of spousal fidelity, because it (the church) is woman.”

At their plenary meeting in Rome Feb. 6-9, members of the dicastery were focused on ways to improve the liturgical formation of priests and laity.

Drawing members’ attention to the introduction of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the pope said, “A church that does not feel passion for spiritual growth, that does not try to speak in a way that is understandable to the men and women of its time, that does not feel sorrow for the division among Christians, that does not quiver with anxiety to proclaim Christ to the nations, is a sick church, and these are the symptoms.”

“Without a renewed encounter with Christ, there is no reform of the church,” the pope said. That is why the bishops gathered at the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65 “knew they had to place the liturgy at the center, because it is the place par excellence for encountering the living Christ.”

The more Catholics are educated about the liturgy and by the liturgy, he said, the more the liturgy will be that place of encounter.

Liturgical formation, he said, is not something for “a few experts” but should be a goal for all Catholics.

“Naturally that does not exclude that there will be a priority in the formation of those who, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, are called to be mystagogues, that is, to take the faithful by the hand and accompany them in learning about the holy mysteries,” Pope Francis said.

Pastors, he said, must “know how to lead the people to the good pasture of the liturgical celebration, where the proclamation of Christ who died and rose again becomes a concrete experience of his life-transforming presence.”

“Begin with the assemblies that gather on the Lord’s Day and on the feasts of the liturgical year,” he said. The Mass itself is the primary opportunity for liturgical formation.

When liturgies are “prepared with pastoral care,” he said, “they become favorable occasions for people to rediscover and deepen the meaning of celebrating the mystery of salvation today.”

SCRANTON – The Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, will celebrate a special Mass in recognition of the ‘World Day of Prayer for the Sick’ on Monday, Feb. 12, 2024, at the Cathedral of Saint Peter.

The liturgy will be held at 12:10 p.m. and will feature the Liturgy of the Anointing.

All people who are sick, as well as those who provide care for those who are ill, are especially encouraged to attend the Mass.

For those unable to attend in person, the Mass will be broadcast live on CTV: Catholic Television of the Diocese of Scranton and livestream on the Diocese of Scranton website and YouTube channel and links will be provided on all Diocesan social media platforms. 

The “first therapy” that must be offered to the sick, and to the world, is a dose of closeness, friendship and love, Pope Francis said in his message for the World Day of the Sick.

“We came into the world because someone welcomed us; we were made for love; and we are called to communion and fraternity,” he wrote in his message for the annual observance Feb. 11, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

A connection with other people “is what sustains us, above all at times of illness and vulnerability,” the 87-year-old pope wrote. “It is also the first therapy that we must all adopt in order to heal the diseases of the society in which we live.”

The theme chosen for the 2024 observance is from the Book of Genesis, “It is not good that man should be alone.” It was subtitled, “Healing the Sick by Healing Relationships.”

In his message, released Jan. 13, Pope Francis said Christians believe that “from the beginning, God, who is love, created us for communion and endowed us with an innate capacity to enter into relationship with others.”

“We were created to be together, not alone,” he wrote. “Precisely because this project of communion is so deeply rooted in the human heart, we see the experience of abandonment and solitude as something frightening, painful and even inhuman.”

Pope Francis recalled the horrible pain of loneliness endured by those who were sick or in nursing homes during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic and had no contact with their loved ones.

“I share too in the pain, suffering and isolation felt by those who, because of war and its tragic consequences, are left without support and assistance,” he said. “War is the most terrible of social diseases, and it takes its greatest toll on those who are most vulnerable.”

But even in rich countries at peace, he said, “old age and sickness are frequently experienced in solitude and, at times, even in abandonment.”

When a culture emphasizes the individual, “exalts productivity at all costs, cultivates the myth of efficiency,” he said, it “proves indifferent, even callous, when individuals no longer have the strength needed to keep pace.”

“It then becomes a throwaway culture, in which ‘persons are no longer seen as a paramount value to be cared for and respected, especially when they are poor or disabled, ‘not yet useful’ –like the unborn — or ‘no longer needed’ — like the elderly,'” he said, quoting his encyclical “Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship.”

The pope said such thinking is reflected in “certain political decisions that are not focused on the dignity of the human person and his or her needs, and do not always promote the strategies and resources needed to ensure that every human being enjoys the fundamental right to health and access to healthcare.”

But, he said, the human dignity of sick and vulnerable also is abandoned when health care is seen simply as the provision of procedures and medication, rather than as caring for the whole person and involving the family in creating a network of support.

“Brothers and sisters,” he wrote, “the first form of care needed in any illness is compassionate and loving closeness. To care for the sick thus means above all to care for their relationships, all of them: with God, with others — family members, friends, health care workers — with creation and with themselves.”

Addressing those who are ill, Pope Francis said: “Do not be ashamed of your longing for closeness and tenderness! Do not conceal it, and never think that you are a burden on others.”

And he called on all Catholics, “with the love for one another that Christ the Lord bestows on us in prayer, especially in the Eucharist,” to “tend to the wounds of solitude and isolation” found particularly among the sick.

“In this way,” the pope said, “we will cooperate in combating the culture of individualism, indifference and waste, and enable the growth of a culture of tenderness and compassion.”

SCRANTON – On Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024, the Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, will be principal celebrant and homilist for the 12:10 p.m. Mass at the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Scranton.

Ash Wednesday marks the start of Lent, a 40-day season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving that ends at sundown on Holy Thursday. It is a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter.

During Lent, the following fasting and abstinence regulations are observed:

FASTING is to be observed on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 14, 2024) and Good Friday (March 29, 2024) by all Catholics over 18 years of age to the beginning of their 60th year. On days of fasting, one full meal is allowed. Two smaller meals, sufficient to maintain strength, may be taken according to one’s needs, but together should not equal another full meal, unless dispensed or excused.

ABSTINENCE from meat is to be observed by all Catholics who are 14 years of age or older. Ash Wednesday, all of the Fridays of Lent, and Good Friday are days of abstinence.

This year, Ash Wednesday falls on the same day as Valentine’s Day. While there have been inquires if a dispensation from the obligations to fast and abstain from meat will be given this year, the Diocese of Scranton explains that the significance of Ash Wednesday takes precedence over Valentine’s Day, just like in 2018.

“Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, a season of grace that challenges us to deepen our relationship with Jesus through prayer, penance and works of charity. The obligations of fasting and abstinence are naturally the priority in the Catholic community. Its spiritual importance is evidenced by the large number of faithful choosing to attend Mass on this day,” Bishop Bambera said. “Valentine’s Day can appropriately be celebrated on another day, such as the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, which happens to be Mardi Gras, a time of celebration prior to the Lenten journey. That will allow Ash Wednesday to retain its appropriate significance.”

In addition to the 12:10 p.m. Mass with Bishop Bambera, ashes will also be distributed at the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Scranton during Masses held at 6:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Mass with the distribution of ashes will also take place at Immaculate Conception Parish, which is linked with the Cathedral, at 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. A full listing of Ash Wednesday Masses for all 110 parishes in the Diocese of Scranton is available on the Diocese of Scranton website at dioceseofscranton.org.

Throughout the Season of Lent, Bishop Bambera will also visit every geographic area of the Diocese of Scranton holding a Lenten Holy Hour. A Holy Hour is a period of time spent in prayer before the Lord, present to all sacramentally in the Eucharist. A Holy Hour involves personal prayer, meditation readings from Scripture, hymns and more.

The dates and locations for Bishop Bambera’s Lenten Holy Hours across the Diocese of Scranton are:

Thursday, Feb. 15, 7 p.m.

Holy Family Parish, Luzerne

 

Tuesday, Feb. 20, 7 p.m.

Our Lady of Victory Parish, Tannersville

 

Wednesday, Feb. 21, 7 p.m.

Most Precious Blood Parish, Hazleton

 

Thursday, Feb. 22, 7 p.m.

Christ the King Parish, Archbald

 

Tuesday, Feb. 27, 7 p.m.

Saint Eulalia Parish, Roaring Brook Township

 

Wednesday, Feb. 28, 7 p.m.

Saint Joseph the Worker Parish, Williamsport

 

Thursday, Feb. 29, 7 p.m.

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish, Tunkhannock

 

Tuesday, March 5, 7 p.m.

Saint Joseph Marello Parish, Pittston

 

Wednesday, March 6, 7 p.m.

Saint John Neumann Parish, Lords Valley

 

Thursday, March 7, 7 p.m.

Epiphany Parish, Sayre

 

Monday, March 18, 7 p.m.

Our Lady of Hope Parish, Wilkes-Barre

 

Wednesday, March 20, 7 p.m.

Saint Teresa of Calcutta Parish, Scranton

National Marriage Week, an annual celebration dedicated to promoting the institution of marriage, announces the launch of its 2024 campaign with the inspiring theme “Love Beyond Words.”

This year’s mission encourages couples to put their love into action and raise awareness of the profound positive impact strong marriages have on society.

Director Carl Caton talks about the importance and thrill of leading this campaign, “This is a national campaign and it’s exciting to watch it grow, but the roots are in communities all around the country. We are here to help connect couples with the resources that will help them strengthen their marriages during this special week and throughout the year!”

Taking place from Feb. 7 to Feb. 14 every year, National Marriage Week coincides with the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, making it the perfect time to celebrate the joys and virtues that marriage brings into our lives.

Research consistently demonstrates that married couples experience great health, financial stability, and personal happiness. Moreover, it provides the best environment for raising children, offering them a better chance at life.

The 2024 campaign, “Love Beyond Words,” will build upon and launch in partnership with well-known sociologist Dr. Bradford Wilcox and will feature content from his upcoming book, “Get Married,” which challenges the notion that individual happiness is found through self-pursuit. Instead, it highlights the fulfillment derived from opening our hearts to others, especially within our most meaningful relationships.

National Marriage Week spokesperson, Arlene Pellicane, a renowned figure in the field and host of the highly regarded podcast, The Happy Home, feels passionately about this mission.

“Marriage is something wonderful to be celebrated. The whole idea is to help people celebrate, to help our society value marriage, and then support marriages by providing them with resources to become more successful in their marital journey,” she said. “You don’t have to come from a happy home to create one.”

This weeklong program will challenge couples to put their love into action and provide couples with practical tools and resources through ideas and activities for:
• Daily connection
• Weekly dates
• Regular getaways

As National Marriage Week showcases, the Sacrament of Marriage is not a one-time ceremony, but a lifelong collaboration with God to bring life and grace to the world through the powerful witness of married love.

We invite you to join National Marriage Week in celebrating love beyond words and creating a lasting impact on the institution of marriage. For more information and to get involved, visit www.MarriageWeek.org.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – People who act shocked that a priest would bless a gay couple but have no problem with him blessing a crooked businessman are hypocrites, Pope Francis said.

“The most serious sins are those that are disguised with a more ‘angelic’ appearance. No one is scandalized if I give a blessing to an entrepreneur who perhaps exploits people, which is a very serious sin. Whereas they are scandalized if I give it to a homosexual – this is hypocrisy,” he told the Italian magazine Credere.

The interview was scheduled for publication Feb. 8, but Vatican News reported on some of its content the day before when the magazine issued a press release about the interview.

Pope Francis repeatedly has been asked about “Fiducia Supplicans” (“Supplicating Trust”) on “the pastoral meaning of blessings,” which was published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Dec. 18 and was approved by the pope. It allows for priests and other ministers to offer informal, non-liturgical blessings to gay couples and couples in “irregular” marriage situations as long as it is clear they are not blessing the couple’s union.

“We all have to respect each other. Everyone,” the pope told Credere. “The heart of the document is welcome.”

“I don’t bless a ‘homosexual marriage,’ I bless two people who love each other, and I also ask them to pray for me,” Pope Francis told Pauline Father Vincenzo Vitale, director of Credere. “Always in the confessional, when these situations come up, homosexual people, remarried people, I always pray and always bless. The blessing should not be denied to anyone. Everyone, everyone, everyone.”

(OSV News) – As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine marks its second year, an annual collection for Central and Eastern Europe’s Catholic churches will help “shine the light of Christ” in a region still scarred by the historical effects of communism, said a U.S. bishop.

On Ash Wednesday, Feb. 14, faithful across the country are being asked to donate to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe.

Some dioceses may opt to schedule the collection at a different date, and faithful also may give directly to the campaign by visiting the USCCB’s #iGiveCatholicTogether website (usccb.igivecatholictogether.org/) and selecting the “Church in Central and Eastern Europe” collection.

Launched under St. John Paul II in 1991 as communist regimes collapsed throughout Europe, the appeal aids Catholics in 28 European countries in various stages of recovering from longtime totalitarian oppression: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia (Czech Republic), Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

“When Catholics give to this collection, they are actively participating in the rebuilding of the Church in places where decades of communism have left behind devastated churches and wounded spirits,” said Auxiliary Bishop Jeffrey M. Monforton of Detroit, chairman of the USCCB’s Subcommittee on the Church in Central and Eastern Europe.

Since 2001 alone, the collection has raised more than $187.5 million, according to Mary Mencarini Campbell, executive director of the USCCB’s Office of National Collections.

In 2023, the USCCB collection distributed $8.7 million in 329 grants, helping to rebuild churches, support seminary education and minister to families and youth.

More than $2 million was allocated for urgent humanitarian and pastoral relief to victims of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which continues attacks launched in 2014. With at least 124,186 war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine since February 2022, the invasion has been named a genocide in two joint reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, for the unlawful deportation and transfer of 19,546 children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

In October 2023, Bishop Monforton visited Ukraine for the first time in two decades, and in a reflection written afterward, he recounted his experiences of visiting Catholic churches and social ministries there and praying with families of the dead.

“I entered crypts that are now well-stocked bomb shelters, with light and heat from generators supplied by the generous contributions of Catholics to the Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe,” he wrote.

Bishop Monforton added that “sadly, the rubble and fresh graves in Ukraine today remind us that the most insidious error of communism was not its economic policy, but its doctrine that human beings are mere cogs in the machine of state, rather than precious children of God.”

“That cruel assumption persists under other guises in the post-communist era,” he wrote. “We see it in the blatant disregard for human life that underlies the violence that has erupted in the region, especially in Ukraine. It pervades countries throughout the former Soviet Empire, where people struggle to build marriages and families. Its most pointed expression was the destruction of churches and the imprisonment or execution of clergy and faithful laity.”

As Russia’s war in Ukraine reverberates throughout Europe and the world, funds from the collection are helping the church to offer spiritual and material relief.

In Ukraine’s Roman Catholic Diocese of Kamyanets-Podilsky, a grant from the collection enabled the training and deployment of psychotherapists, social workers and pastoral counselors to address war-related traumatic stress disorder in soldiers and civilians.

The collection also helped build a cathedral for the small but vibrant Catholic community in predominantly Muslim Kyrgyzstan — a faith community founded by prisoners who had been deported on account of their faith of their faith decades earlier by Soviet authorities to the region’s gulags.

In Romania, collection funds were applied by the Archdiocese of Fagaras and Alba Iulia to restore a landmark 18th-century seminary, while making it handicap accessible.

In Slovakia, the collection funded a pro-life counseling center serving hundreds of women in challenging pregnancies. Engaged and married couples in Lithuania received counseling and support from trained volunteer mentors, and in Albania, catechists and extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist benefited from a three-year program of study.

“The ministries that you support through this collection bring the Bread of Life to people who hunger for the Word of God. They bring food, shelter and love to the Jesus who suffers among the poor,” wrote Bishop Monforton. “They prepare young people, informed by Scripture, and inspired by the witness of priests, sisters and catechists, to tell their neighbors about Jesus.

“It is my hope that you give generously to the Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe,” he wrote. “In doing so, you fight alongside St. Michael and St. John Paul II to free souls trapped by the forces of despair and lead them into the light of Christ.”