July 2005 - Franciscan Brother Jerry Beetz

When Franciscan Brother Jerry Beetz was growing up on the west side of Cincinnati, he had heard stories about the poverty in Appalachia, but nothing really prepared him for the real thing.

Brother Beetz serves as pastoral director of Holy Cross Church in Breathitt County, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia's coal country. Breathitt County is one of the poorest in the state. Median annual income for residents there is $19,000, compared with $42,000 that is the national median.

Brother Beetz's church conducts monthly thrift sales the first Friday of each month to help those who can't pay their utility bills. This year has been particularly hard, as the scorching summer has sent some of the trailer residents' bills "through the roof," he reports. Some families are still digging out from falling into arrears on their winter heating bills: a cycle of poverty that's hard to break out of.

As mining operations have become increasingly automated, jobs are becoming more scarce in the area, Brother Beetz adds; more and more young people are moving out.

With fewer than 20 families, the parish is hard-pressed to meet its own bills. When the church needed to replace a roof that was more than 30 years old, it dipped heavily into its own savings to supplement a grant provided by the Franciscan order.

An accomplished guitarist, Brother Jerry lends his musical skills to the Saturday Mass at Holy Cross and to the Sunday morning Mass at Mother of Good Counsel in Hazard. That sharing of time and talents is evident in the dozen or so mission churches scattered in the mountains and "hollers" of eastern Kentucky. Grants from Catholic Extension help keep these little faith communities alive, sometimes in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

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