US Church collects donations to aid Catholics in former communist countries

(February 15, 2011) The Church in the United States will take up a collection on Ash Wednesday, March 9, to aid Catholics in Central and Eastern Europe. The U.S. bishops' conference is organizing the collection in parishes with the theme "Great Needs Remain" to raise awareness of the impoverishment of the Church in that region. A press release from the conference noted in particular the aging physical structures, insufficient funding, and a lack of religious and trained lay persons, as challenges of the Catholics in Central and Eastern Europe.
Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia and chairman of the conference's Subcommittee on Aid to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe, affirmed, "Our assistance is vital to the growth and strength of the Church in these regions." Declan Murphy, director of the collection, reported that many needs still exist in countries such as Albania, where 95% of the country's houses of worship were razed or forcibly converted to secular uses by the Communist government." Murphy, who recently travelled to Albania, reported that there were 300 Albanian Catholic priests in 1944. By the fall of communism, there were only 30. Today, Albania's ancient Catholic community, which dates from the time of St. Paul, is again a mission territory where heroic bishops and priests are hard at work on a Catholic revival," he said, He added that it will take decades to reverse the damage.