A Collection for the Church In Africa
Bishop Joseph Perry

For several years now the bishops of the United States have batted around the idea of having a national collection for the Church in Africa similar to the support of American Catholics have given to the Black and Indian Missions Collection and the collection for the Church in Eastern Europe.

The US Bishops’ historic 2001 statement: A Call to Solidarity with Africa has given urgency to this idea. The Church continues to grow faster in Africa than on any other continent with the number of Catholics in its sixty-one countries expected to surpass the total in Europe over the next two decades. While we do tremendous work to promote development in Africa to improve the quality of peoples’ lives through the unparalleled efforts of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a similar level of attention has not yet been given to elevating the quality of programs and materials for the pastoral work of the Church in Africa.

In more recent years individual parishes in the United States have embarked on unprecedented initiatives with parishes and dioceses across the African continent. The bishops of the US, in effort to demonstrate their unequivocal solidarity with their brother bishops in Africa, established a voluntary annual appeal to raise funds for a Pastoral Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa. The bishops took this appeal back to their dioceses in order to arrange how best to respond. Some dioceses wrote a check immediately, others took the appeal to their parishes, some only to their African American parishes.

The USCCB Ad Hoc Committee on the Church in Africa, as of March 2006, has collected close to $1 million such that the first disbursements could be made next year. With the amount of the fund assembled thus far, individual African Episcopal Conferences will be allowed two petitions for grants for approved programs in the vicinity of twenty-five thousand dollars each. Think how much more we could grant if our Fund had more money in this special coffer.

We urge you or your parish or organization to consider a donation to help aid the church in Africa. Let us know your response! Checks should be written out to and mailed to:

Ad Hoc Committee for the Church in Africa
US Conference of Catholic Bishops
PO Box 73142
Baltimore, Maryland 21273

Bless you for reading this appeal!

Bishop John H. Ricard, SSJ, Chairman
Bishop Joseph N. Perry, Committee African American Catholics
Bishop Robert N. Lynch, Catholic Relief Services
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Committee International Policy
Bishop Thomas Wenski, Committee International Policy