Vatican cardinal boosts annual Good Friday collection for Church in Holy Land
March 12, 2018
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri has appealed to the world's Catholics to support the faithful in the Holy Land, in a message released on March 12.
Promoting the annual worldwide collection for the Church in the Holy Land, which is traditionally held on Good Friday, Cardinal Sandri—the prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches—writes:
Building the Church in the Holy Land, through the edifices of cult and the living stones —the Christian faithful, is the responsibility of all the Particular Churches of Christianity, recognizing that the Christian faith had its first impulse from the Mother Church in Jerusalem.
Cardinal Sandri reminds the faithful that Christians in the Middle East often face severe obstacles, and need the solidarity of their fellow believers. More specifically, he says, the proceeds from the Good Friday collection help to maintain some of the most important shrines in the Christian world. Last year, he reports, the proceeds of the collection helped to fund the restoration of "two Basilicas, the one of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, built on the grotto where Jesus was born and the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, built on the tomb of Jesus, which became the womb of life through His Resurrection."
The cardinal also reported that last year's collection brought in $5.5 million and €1.4 million for the Church in the Holy Land.
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