U.S. Bishops Approve Over $830,000 in Funding for Pastoral Projects to Support the Church in Africa

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Subcommittee on the Church in Africa approved 36 grants totaling $832,500 in funding to support bishops’ conferences, dioceses and pastoral projects across the African continent.

“I am pleased to announce our support for the Church in Africa, which despite great challenges, continues to grow and bring people throughout the continent closer to Christ,” said Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., of Newark, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Church in Africa.

Among the projects approved to receive funding through the Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa are the following:

• In postwar Liberia, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Liberia will organize a national gathering of 250 young people to be formed as agents of peace and reconciliation.
• In celebration of the Year of the Word of God throughout the world, the Episcopal Conference of Malawi will undertake efforts to share the Bible throughout the country through various media as well as training for members of the Bible Apostolate.
• The Tanzania Episcopal Conference will train 170 religion teachers from all dioceses who will both teach and train other volunteer teachers to help meet the critical staffing needs in secondary schools across the country.
• The Regional Episcopal Conference of West Africa (RECOWA) will organize a workshop for member conferences in the region to discuss the growing menace of land grabbing and actions the Church can take to curb it.

Additional areas of funding include seminarian and religious formation, evangelization, family ministries, and lay leadership training.

The Subcommittee on the Church in Africa oversees the Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa as part of the USCCB Committee on National Collections. It allocates revenue received from the Solidarity Fund, which is a voluntary collection, as pastoral grants to episcopal conferences and their regional associations in Africa.

To learn more about the work of the Subcommittee watch the SFCA videos and visit www.usccb.org/africa.