March 29, 2012

Dear Friends in Christ,
In late April, our archdiocese will take up the Catholic Relief Services collection.

Your generous gifts help Catholic Relief Services prioritize families, value their fundamental role in society and continue striving to protect them.

The collection funds six Catholic agencies that protect families by providing basic humanitarian aid and life-skills training to those in need, protecting poor families all over the world, advocating for policies that strengthen families abroad and resettling and welcoming refugees forced from their homes.

Recently, collection funds helped Sipho Ncube, a widow and mother of three from Zimbabwe. Sipho was selected by Catholic Relief Services and the Organization for Rural Associations for Progress to receive assistance from a small livestock pilot project. The initiative helps extremely poor families lift themselves out of poverty by giving them goats, pigs, and poultry to build household wealth. Project staff showed Sipho how to properly care for, house, and breed her animals, which allowed her to sell the offspring and feed her family during hardships and food shortages.

The U.S. Catholic community reaches out to families around the globe through the Catholic Relief Services collection. This year’s campaign theme is “How Will You Help Jesus in Disguise?”

In our archdiocese, the Catholic Relief Services appeal weekend is April 14 and 15 and the collection is April 21 and 22. This important collection not only provides for our marginalized, impoverished and vulnerable brothers and sisters all over the world — it does much more.

The collection supports six organizations that value families and work to provide pastoral support, humanitarian aid and other vital assistance to them each day. The work supported through the Catholic Relief Services collection prioritizes families by reuniting them, teaching essential skills for success and giving voice to the underrepresented everywhere.

Looking at all six agencies together they:

• Alleviate suffering and provide assistance to people in need through the international Catholic humanitarian agency Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

• Supply outreach and pastoral care to refugees, migrants, and travelers through the USCCB’s Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church.

• Provide assistance to victims of natural disasters and other emergencies around the world through the Holy Father’s Relief Fund.

• Advocate for poor and vulnerable people and for international justice and peace through the USCCB’s Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development.

• Actively help victims of human trafficking and refugees by providing resettlement services and public policy advocacy through the USCCB’s Department of Migration and Refugee Services (MRS).

• Provide legal services to struggling immigrants through Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc. (CLINIC).

A portion of the CRS collection also is used locally to support the archdiocese’s social ministries.

You can be assured that your generosity will illustrate how we all can help Jesus in disguise throughout the world. Please visit the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website, http://www.usccb.org/crs collection, for more information about the collection and the essential organizations funded by it.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Most Reverend Dennis M. Schnurr
Archbishop of Cincinnati