GOOD FRIDAY COLLECTION

AIDS HOLY LAND CHRISTIANS

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio is urging the Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens to support the collection taken at the Good Friday liturgy in their parish churches April 14, which assists the Holy Shrines in the Holy Land and the works of mercy performed by the Church in the Christian communities there.

            The Bishop sought support for the collection in response to a letter he and the diocesan bishops in the U.S. received from Cardinal Ignace Moussa Daoud, who heads the Vatican Congregation for the Oriental Churches.

The Cardinal said that decades-long conflict in the Middle East, and especially in the Holy Land, has deprived Catholic communities and institutions of the “adequate means to maintain and promote religious, humanitarian and cultural activities.”

            He said “this distressing situation” leads to poverty and unemployment, with serious consequences for families. It also increases the “disturbing phenomenon” of a continual exodus of Christians, “especially young couples for whom there is no prospect of a safe and dignified future,” he noted.

            The presence of Christians in the Holy Land “is more necessary than ever,” Cardinal Daoud said, adding that the Church “ought to find in the Holy Land living communities that profess the Gospel faith.”

            Franciscan friars are responsible for the protection and the physical and pastoral care of the Holy Land shrines, a charge entrusted to them by the Holy See in 1342.

            Parishioners in the Brooklyn Diocese have responded well to the Good Friday appeal. Last year, they contributed $215,310. In 2004 they gave $193,36l.

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3/17/06