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Collection helps at home and abroad On the weekend of March 8-9, a collection will be taken up in parishes throughout the Albany Diocese to benefit missions and parishes in Latin America, native American missions, and outreach to Black Catholics. The annual collection funds pastoral projects at the local, national and international levels. The money is used to assist missionary efforts in Hispanic, Afro-American and Native American areas, where economic deprivation is a daily fact of life. Funds from the collection also educate priests, religious and lay pastoral leaders; train catechists and youth ministers; and assist dioceses that cannot support these programs themselves. In Bolivia, for example, the collection supports the Aymara Liturgical Ministry Center, which educates leaders and sends them to teach in far-flung towns. In Peru, the program funds retreats for poverty-stricken coffee plantation workers. In Ecuador, training for deacons assists rural ministers to become more effective. While Catholics in the Albany Diocese send money to the missions through the collection (about $125,000 last year), some of the donations are returned to the Diocese for its work among minority populations. For example, $58,000 was granted to the Diocese last year. Since 1980, the total amount the Diocese has received in grants is more than $867,000. In a letter read at Masses throughout the Diocese last weekend, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard told Catholics: "These figures strongly reflect the generous support of the work of evangelization that you and many others have given, as well as the national recognition of such sterling support. You have a living tradition of generous response to the plight of some of the neediest people in our country and Latin America. I well know and appreciate your ongoing generosity." (3/6/2003) |