News from Catholic Extension


January 2010

  • Samoan home for elderly and disabled selected for Extension employee fundraiser
    Posted: 1/4/2010
    Hope House, a ministry that provides shelter and care for the elderly and disabled on the island of Samoa, has been chosen as beneficiary of the Catholic Church Extension Society's 2009 employee pledge drive. As a result, the facility will receive more than $2,600 in staff contributions and matching funds from Catholic Extension.

    Operated by religious sisters, Hope House is the only residential facility on the Island of Samoa offering around-the-clock care for the elderly and disabled, the "poor and abandoned" who suffer from a variety of medical situations, including stroke, Parkinson's disease, intellectual disability, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, cerebral palsy, scoliosis, juvenile arthritis, and physical disability due to accident.

    Hope House was also made available for temporary shelter to those in need of a place to stay after the devastating tsunami in late September.

    Sr. Elsa O. Sintilias, OP, Hope House's administrator, thanked Catholic Extension employees for "accepting us as your beneficiary for your Christmas Drive."

    "We always hope and pray that there will be more generous people who will support this ministry here and abroad," Sr. Elsa wrote. "Thank you friends for your love and concern for these poor people here in American Samoa."

    Hope House has 19 caregivers, including two nurses, as well as two cooks, two laundry and housekeepers, and two maintenance workers.

    Given a goal of raising $1,000, the 39 employees of Catholic Extension, collected more than $1,300, matched dollar for dollar at the direction of Fr. Jack Wall, Catholic Extension's president.

    With the extra money, Sr. Elsa plans to buy a new heavy-duty washing machine so her small laundry staff can keep up with the demand for fresh linens and clothing and maintain a clean and dignified environment for the residents of Hope House.

    Hope House supports its staff salaries of $232,000 by securing donations from local businesses, seeking grants from other organizations and hosting an annual "Telethon run" by local townsfolk who want to help. These efforts, though, are still not enough. Hope house also has the goal this year of getting more volunteers, to increase the quality of care to their disabled residents.

    "It is our joy to be here in American Samoa to help the diocese care for these poor and abandoned elderly and handicapped children," Sr. Elsa wrote to Catholic Extension. "We are capable to extend our services on this island as long as the diocese needs us, we are ready to do it!"
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  • Small Florida parish receives $37,000 Grant from Catholic Extension
    Posted: 1/4/2010
    St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Blountstown, Florida has been awarded a $37,000 grant from Catholic Extension. The funds will be used to support Fr. Kurian Manikuttiyil, whose ministries include work at two prisons and a mental health hospital.

    Fr. Manikuttiyil's pastoral duties at St. Francis of Assisi, a small parish with about 45 families, include celebrating two Masses a week, providing for the reception of the other sacraments and helping with religious education.

    At his outside ministries, the populations are considerably larger: he makes it possible for 1,188 prisoners at Calhoun Correctional Institution and 1,289 inmates at the Liberty Correctional Institution to receive the sacraments at five Masses each month. At Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee, a mental facility with an institutionalized population of 1,200, he celebrates one Mass per weekend, which includes counseling and visiting the sick.

    The weekly on site presence of a Catholic priest for liturgy, confessions and counseling continues to be an ongoing plus for these institutionalized communities, but while parish attendance and support at the weekend liturgy at St. Francis continues to improve, it is not enough to cover the priest's salary and total expenses, particularly because a great deal of travel is involved and there is no income from the clients at the prisons or hospitals.

    "In most ministries those who attend Mass or receive some help from the Church are able to give something back, even if it is a small amount. That's not the case here," said Joseph Boland, director of grants. "But at the same time ministering to the imprisoned and those who are psychologically ill is vital if we are to fulfill the mandates of Christ, and that is why we support Fr. Manikuttiyil's work."
  • Extension to commit more than $3 million to seminarian education in FY 2010
    Posted: 1/3/2010
    Catholic Church Extension Society will award $3,058,275 in grants in FY 2010, a significant increase from recent years, to help educate 509 seminarians from America's most underfunded dioceses. The 104-year-old national organization is responding not only to Pope Benedict XVI's "Year for Priests" designation, but to the reality that diocesan endowments for seminarian education have shrunk during the current economic downturn, even as the number of Catholics in poor and isolated regions of the country is growing.

    Seminarian education is usually one of the largest expenses for many of America's 195 dioceses. The Church's 84 "mission dioceses," which comprise the most impoverished and remote areas of the country, spend an average of $30,000 a year per seminarian to train them in philosophy, theology, spirituality and religious life, as well as to prepare future priests for ordination. Costs include tuition, room and board, books and health insurance.

    The greatest rate of Catholic population growth is occurring within mission dioceses, primarily in the Southern and Western United States where much of Catholic Extension's funding is directed. Growth since 1990 has ranged from 45 percent in Arkansas to 111 percent in Nevada.

    "Educating the next generation of Catholic leadership is critical, especially for those areas of the country where the Catholic population is growing yet parishes and residential pastoral ministers are few," said Joseph Boland, Grants Director for Catholic Extension. "Catholic Extension's contributions will enable our young people to most effectively answer God's call to service in these poor and isolated areas where the future of the Church is unfolding."

    The grants will educate an estimated 15 percent of America's seminarians from 32 geographically diverse dioceses -- from Juneau, Alaska, to Amarillo, Texas, to Fargo, North Dakota. Grants will also be given to dioceses in the Samoan Islands and Puerto Rico, as well as to fund the seminary program of the Archdiocese of Military Services.

    Catholic Extension is additionally committed to supporting "Year for Priests" which Pope Benedict opened on June 19, 2009--the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the day of sanctification of priests. The Pope also marked the occasion by naming St. John Vianney the Universal Patron of Priests; 2009 was the 150th anniversary of his death. The year will close during a World Meeting of Priests in St. Peter's Square in Rome on June 19, 2010.
  • Kansas church that inspired the Extension movement celebrates centennial
    Posted: 1/1/2010
    Catholic Extension relived a little of its own history this past fall, taking part in the centennial celebration of a small Kansas parish whose plight 100 years ago helped launch the Extension Movement.

    It was 1905 when Father Francis Clement Kelley, a priest from Michigan, visited Ellsworth, Kansas, as he toured Catholic churches on the Midwestern frontier. Visiting St. Bernard Parish, he was shocked when he saw a rundown, weedy church and a pastor living in complete poverty.

    On the train ride home, Fr. Kelley wrote a magazine article titled "I know a little 'shanty' in the West," which caused a sensation when it was published. Urban Catholics immediately heard God's call and wanted to help, prompting Fr. Kelley to form the Catholic Church Extension Society.

    Father Steve Heina, St. Bernard's current pastor, knew the story well and asked Catholic Extension to send someone who could stand in for the countless thousands of those who for 100 years have financially supported Mission America through Catholic Extension.

    Edward Vogel of the Grants Department made the journey from Chicago and took part in the festivities, reading a letter to the parish from Father Jack Wall, Catholic Extension's president.

    "Today, as you celebrate the centennial of this beautiful church of yours, and see how far you have come, be proud of the many who have been helped by the Catholic Church Extension Society that traces its roots to this very place," the letter read in part.

    Vogel also presented Fr. Heina with an original 1910 receipt for $2,000 donated by Catholic Extension to finish St. Bernard Church, which opened in 1909 and is now part of the Diocese of Salina.

    The proud brick building, a far cry from the "shanty" it once was, sits surrounded by well-kept, middle-class Ellsworth. Bishops, pastors and priests associated with St. Bernard's over the years came to celebrate the centennial Mass, and parishioners past and present filled the pews.

    Few could have predicted the scope of the movement launched by a visit to a tiny church in a town a long way from the nation's great Catholic cities: to date, Catholic Extension has raised and granted nearly $500 million, funding the construction, expansion and renovation of 12,000 churches.

    Thanks to a faithful base of 60,000 contributors, Catholic Extension also supports social services, seminarian education and other church-building initiatives.

    But as Fr. Wall said in his letter, the work is far from finished.

    "Remember, too, the many Catholics across this country who are like the residents of Ellsworth in 1905, still lacking the basic needs of good Church," he wrote. "Keep them and all of our missioners in your hearts and in your prayers."
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