Support Christians in Middle East through Good Friday collection, Vatican prelates urge
March 10, 2015
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, the prefect of the Congergation for the Eastern Churches, has written to all the world’s bishops, encouraging support for the annual Good Friday collection, which is taken up for the Church in the Holy Land.
“If the Christians of the Holy Land are encouraged to resist, to the degree possible, the understandable temptation to flee, the faithful throughout the world are asked to take their plight to heart,” Cardinal Sandri wrote. (The letter was also signed by Archbishop Cyril Vasil, the secretary of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches.)
“Presently, there are millions of refugees fleeing Syria and Iraq, where the roar of arms does not cease and the way of dialogue and concord seems to be completely lost,” the letter notes. The annual collection, the Vatican officials say, is an opportunity for all the faithful to become “pilgrims in faith.”
The Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land has provided an accounting of the funds that were received the Good Friday collection last year. The greatest expenditure of emergency funding was for aid to refugees in Syria and Iraq. But the collection also furnished support for craftsmen in Jordan, medical care in Bethlehem, and apartments in Jerusalem for young couples who want to remain in the Holy Land.
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Posted by: Archpriest -
Mar. 10, 2015 7:40 PM ET USA
In the projects funded from the Good Friday Holy Land offering as announced today by the "Oriental Congregation." Not even one Eastern Catholic church, shrine, or school is listed as a direct recipient. This despite the fact that the majority of Holy Land Catholics are Melkites. The Latin Rite Patriarchate of Jerusalem is a much smaller entity. This brings into serious doubt the matter of honesty and "transparency" that Pope Frances has enjoined upon the dicastries. Shameful!
