WASHINGTON—The 2015 annual Catholic Home Missions Appeal will be taken up in many dioceses the weekend of April 25-26. This appeal helps to sustain nearly 45 percent of all dioceses and eparchies in rural, struggling areas in the country and in a number of U.S. territories in the Caribbean and Pacific.

Catholic Home Missions (CHM), Strengthening the Church at Home, helps to support evangelization, catechesis, seminarian education, lay ministry training, Hispanic ministry, and other pastoral programs for dioceses in need. The Appeal is a significant source of support to bolster domestic Catholic pastoral programs. “It can be surprising to hear about the great need of many of our dioceses here in the United States. For those who have never experienced life in a mission diocese it can be hard to imagine not having access to a priest or basic materials to teach the faith,” said Bishop Peter F. Christensen of Boise, Idaho, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Subcommittee on Catholic Home Missions. “This collection supports our neighbors here at home and provides for their spiritual needs.”

Last year, the USCCB Subcommittee on Catholic Home Missions approved more than $9 million in grants for 2015. The Diocese of Tucson, Arizona, is one of the 83 dioceses that received a grant. It is using CHM funds to provide basic catechesis materials to Spanish-speaking Catholics, to conduct a ministry program for deaf children and their families, and to support the work of a few priests on four Native American reservations serving over 24,000 people.

In the Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama, the Catholic population is less than 3 percent, and in rural areas, many priests serve three or four parishes. A grant from Catholic Home Missions funded St. Barnabas School in Birmingham, where the students are primarily African American and Hispanic and many are non-Catholic and from low-income families. The grant supports the school’s mission of pro…

Source:: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops