CATHOLIC CHARITIES APPEAL UPDATE
Every year, you are invited and encouraged to join with all of the parishes throughout our archdiocese in participating in the annual Catholic Charities Appeal and every year you respond with great generosity! To date for this year, your contributions to CCA total $95,095. We’re ahead of last year at this time when contributions totaled $84,854. But, the need throughout the archdiocese continues to increase as the cost of almost everything, including the daily essentials of food and housing, continues to rise. Your contribution helps thousands of needy people throughout our archdiocese with food, housing, educational assistance, and other important social services.
The beneficiaries of CCA are grouped into five key areas: Special Education, Social Services, Evangelization, Retired and Infirm Priests, and Local Mission Activities. You may be familiar with Saint Lucy School for Children with Visual Impairments, Our Lady of Confidence Day School or St. Katherine School (which serve children with intellectual disabilities). These three schools are funded almost entirely through CCA.
Social Services provides community food cupboards in 50 locations throughout the archdiocese, including our sister parish, St. Martin de Porres. It also provides housing for the homeless in seven facilities, including Mercy Hospice where many of our parishioners provide meals. Three archdiocesan offices (Office of Life and Family, Office for Persons with Disabilities and Office of Cultural Ministries) are able to serve thousands of people every year through the funding they receive from CCA. Over 120 retired and ill priests rely on this Appeal to support them address their increasing health issues. And 19 mission parishes throughout the archdiocese, once again including our sister parish, St. Martin de Porres, rely heavily on funding they receive from the Appeal. These are but a few of the examples of the very practical ways that your support of the annual Catholic Charities Appeal helps those in need experience God’s love and care for them. In their name, I thank you!
The 2025 Catholic Charities Appeal has a $10 million goal; $5.2 million has been raised to date. In his message for this year’s appeal, Archbishop Nelson Pérez reminded us that one in five people across the Greater Philadelphia area rely on the Catholic Charities Appeal of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for help and hope. He went on to write:
They are our neighbors, and they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. They are seeking comfort, support and dignity in the face of challenges many of us cannot imagine. Your generosity touches their lives in profound ways because you embody Christ’s compassionate love and mercy by coming to their aid.
Our generous response to this annual Appeal ensures that critical and life-sustaining works of charity throughout the archdiocese can serve hundreds of thousands of people who rely on us for real help and hope each year. This Appeal is the largest annual fundraising initiative in our archdiocese because it fuels our ability to share the love of Christ by imitating his example of service to those most in need. Those needs are many and they grow constantly.
If you have already given to the 2025 Catholic Charities Appeal, I thank you in the name of the countless men, women and children throughout the archdiocese who have benefited from your generosity. If you haven’t done so yet, I encourage you to use the form you received in the mail earlier this year or give electronically by going to Catholic Charities Philadelphia. May God bless you for your care for those in our community who need your assistance!