Projects in Need
Help for the Training of 221 Seminarians in the Congo
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Almost one-third of all seminarians in the world today are from the continent of Africa. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, the number of priestly vocations is gratifyingly large. In the archdiocese of Kinshasa, there are no fewer than 221 young men currently training for the priesthood. The rector of the seminary, Father Emmanuel Kwazifwanga Abita, knows all their life stories. He tells us, “One of our candidates already felt the desire to become a priest as ...
Help to Repair Three Churches in Mozambique
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Last year, on the Third Sunday of Advent, in the early morning, tropical cyclone Chido cut a swath of devastation through the province of Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique, a region sadly already plagued for several years by Islamic jihadist terrorism, and where hundreds of thousands of civilians are homeless refugees. With wind speeds initially bordering on 125 miles an hour, the cyclone tore through homes, schools, hospital clinics, and kindergartens, flattening trees and electricity pylons and knocking out the ...
Mass Stipends for 46 Priests in Africa
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This year, the Missionaries of Africa are celebrating the 200th birthday of their founder, Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie, who was born on October 31, 1825 in the small town of Huire, near Bayonne in southwest France. In 1867, he was appointed Archbishop of Algiers and, in 1868, as apostolic delegate for the Sahara and Sudan, later becoming a cardinal. He was especially opposed to slavery and human trafficking. In 1868, he founded the Missionaries of Africa, popularly known as the ...
Help for the Training of Seminarians in Brazil
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The Diocese of Rio Branco lies in western Brazil. Large sections of this area of over 40,000 square miles are covered in rainforest. A remote and inaccessible region with vast distances and many settlements only accessible via water, it has a population of about 700,000 people, of whom approximately half a million are Catholic. There is a grave shortage of priests within the diocese, with just 39 active priests, so that on average, each one has to minister to almost ...
Help for a Contemplative Community in Indonesia
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In the year 1212, the young and beautiful Chiara Offreduccio di Favarone slipped quietly out of her wealthy parental home, leaving behind her loved ones, her safety, and her comfort, in order to embrace a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience and give the rest of her life to her bridegroom Jesus Christ. She had been “infected” by the ideals of Saint Francis of Assisi, and so her horrified family were faced with a fait accompli. She had her hair ...
Support for Religious Sisters in the Dominican Republic
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Most people tend to think of the Dominican Republic as a holiday paradise, with idyllic sandy beaches. Many are astonished to discover that there is, in fact, great poverty there. The west of the country, bordering on its crisis-ridden neighbor, Haiti, is an almost forgotten region, facing major economic, social, and pastoral challenges. The poverty is particularly extreme in the so-called “Bateyes.” These were originally temporary hut settlements, built in the first half of the 20th century, for use by ...
Renovation of a Coptic Catholic Seminary in Egypt
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In Maadi, a suburb of Cairo, 28 young men are currently training for the priesthood at Egypt’s one and only Coptic Catholic seminary. They come from different parts of the country. Abba Romany Fawzy, the rector of the seminary explains, “The mission of the seminary is to keep alive the flame of faith in the Church through the formation of generations of good priests. Our aim is to make sure that these priests are men of piety and prayer and ...
Help for the Training of Seminarians in Mexico
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There are over 120 “Redemptoris Mater” priestly seminaries around the world. They were established by Pope Saint John Paul II to promote the new evangelization. And today, young men from many different countries and nationalities pursue their vocation to the priesthood in these seminaries. The particular feature of the seminaries is that the priests who emerge from them are ready and willing to go anywhere in the world as missionaries, at the request of their own bishops. One of these ...
Supporting the Life and Ministry of Four Monks in Iraq
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Karamles, or Karamlesh, was an ancient city and is now a small town, 18 miles southeast of Mosul in the Nineveh Plains region of northern Iraq. It is a mainly Christian town, with the majority belonging to the Chaldean Catholic Church. In August 2014, Karamles was overtaken by fighters of the so-called Islamic State (IS), and almost all its inhabitants were forced to flee. When Pope Francis visited Iraq in March of 2021, he celebrated Holy Mass in Erbil, where ...
A Car for a Diocese in the Central African Republic
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Since June of 2024, Italian Carmelite Father Aurelio Gazzera has been coadjutor bishop in the Diocese of Bangassou, a particularly difficult region in the southeast Central African Republic. This vast area of 52,123 miles is almost half the size of Italy, and large parts of it still lie in the hands of rebel forces who regularly launch attacks. Moreover, it is inaccessible and covered in rainforest, bordering on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan – both crisis ...