Projects in Need
Support for 21 Sisters and One Brother in Moldova
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The Republic of Moldova became independent in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is bordered by Romania on the west and Ukraine to the east, north, and south, and is among the poorest countries in Europe. Different sources put the population at anywhere between 2.5 and four million people. One reason for this discrepancy is that a significant portion of the adult population no longer live permanently in the country, and instead travel abroad to earn a ...
A Vehicle for a Parish in Ecuador
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The Parish of San José de Cuatro Esquinas, or Saint Joseph of the Four Corners, is in the Diocese of Guaranda in Ecuador. It lies at an altitude of well over 10,000 feet, some five miles from the provincial capital of Guaranda. It includes over 50 villages and hamlets in an area of mountains, steep hillsides, rocky outcrops, and high plateaus. It is populated almost entirely by indigenous people, who live primarily by farming and livestock rearing. Life here is ...
An Intensive Outreach Program for an Archdiocese in Bangladesh
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The Archdiocese of Dhaka in Bangladesh serves a population of just 85,000 Catholics. As in all the country, Catholics make up only a tiny minority, less than one percent. Over 90 percent of the country’s population is Muslim, and most of the Christians belong to ethnic minorities, who are already on the margins of society. The faithful turn to the Church in all their needs. One problem is that the people in many regions have very little formal education. The ...
Mass Stipends for 50 Priests in Sierra Leone
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The small nation of Sierra Leone in West Africa has seen a great deal of suffering in the past 35 years. A bloody civil war, lasting from 1991 to 2002, has left deep scars that are still evident today. Thousands were killed; children were forcibly recruited as child soldiers; untold numbers of women and girls were subject to rape and sexual violence; and over 2 million people forced to flee their homes. At the same time, vast swaths of the ...
Strengthening Pastoral Outreach in Mozambique
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The parish of Our Lady of the Rosary is based in Manica, Mozambique, in the Diocese of Chimoio. It covers an extensive rural area, within a radius of 43 miles, and includes 74 villages and hamlets, 58 of which have their own chapel. In the remaining villages, the Catholic faithful gather under large trees, or they have to travel to the nearest village with a chapel. The Franciscans have been working in this area for over a hundred years. At present, ...
Help for the Training of Norbertine Novices in India
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The Norbertine, or Premonstratensian, Order was founded in France in the 12th century and has 1,600 members on six continents today. In 1960, the Dutch Norbertine Fathers founded what is now the Abbey of Jamtara in India, and just two years later, in 1962, accepted its first Indian novices. Father Arul Amalraj, the present Superior, gratefully remembers the work of those early Dutch missionaries: “Their tireless work, sweat, and immeasurable commitment laid the foundations for the growth of the Abbey ...
A New Church for a Community in Honduras
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Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, and the country is additionally burdened by a grave energy crisis and constant power cuts. Then, there are the extremes of climate, with the country sometimes facing extensive periods of drought, and at other times, torrential rainfall. Moreover, the country is used as a transit land for the drug trade going into other countries. As a result, large areas of the country are controlled by criminal gangs called “Maras.” The ...
Help for the Training of 182 Seminarians in Ukraine
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No fewer than 182 young men from different parts of Ukraine are currently training for the priesthood at the Greek Catholic seminary in Ivano-Frankivsk. For the first six months of the war, the seminary was used as emergency accommodation for 200 women refugees and their children, while the seminarians studied online instead. But in September 2022, the seminarians returned to the seminary and resumed their face-to-face studies. The continuing war and the related economic crisis are a major headache for ...
Help for the Training of Seminarians in the Congo
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The Diocese of Butembo-Beni is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It lies in a crisis region between the Congo and Uganda, and is rich in natural resources. For years now, the rebels of the so-called Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), originally based in Uganda, have been spreading fear and terror there. Thousands have left as refugees, and massacres, abductions, rapes, and lootings are now regular and repeated occurrences. During his visit to the DRC in February 2023, Pope Francis ...
Support Religious Literature in Guatemala
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The civil war in Guatemala dragged on for 36 years before coming to an end in 1996. It was one of the most brutal armed conflicts in all of Latin America, in which at least 200,000 people were killed, while tens of thousands more disappeared without trace. Among the dead, there were many people murdered by left-wing guerrillas out of hatred for the Faith. In 2017, four of these martyrs were beatified. They had “shed their blood during the internal ...