April 2, 2002

NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For More Information, Contact:
Bud Bunce (503) 233-8373
bbunce@archdpdx.org

CATHOLIC HOME MISSIONS COLLECTION

        The Archdiocese of Portland will take up the collection for the Catholic Home
Missions on the weekend of April 27 – 28. The Catholic Home Missions committee
provides grants to 82 dioceses, including the Eastern Catholic eparchies, in the United
States and in its territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The collection helps to
provide basic pastoral ministries. All of these poor dioceses need financial assistance
to provide aid to mission parishes, religious education and training for priests, deacons,
women religious and lay ministers.

        The U. S. Bishops' Committee on the Home Missions was founded as part of the
American Board of Catholic Missions in 1924. Many parishes in these poor dioceses
cannot provide their people with such basic pastoral services as regular Mass without a
helping hand from Catholics elsewhere. The Home Missions are wherever Catholics
are few and the Church is poor and fragile. This includes the vast wilderness of Alaska,
the Deep South, in the Rocky Mountain States, in Appalachia, in the dusty Southwest,
in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the lonely Marshall Islands.
Approximately 40 percent of U.S. dioceses need serious financial assistance.

        Catholics in the Archdiocese of Portland are encouraged to be as generous
 as possible in their support for the Catholic Home Missions collection on April 27 – 28.

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