7th February 2010
Each year parishioners propse a variety of charities from which the Parish Pastoral Council selects two - one overseas and the other "at home" - which we support with our Lenten Alms-giving. At its last meeting the PPC confirmed and clarified our long-standing policy on charitable giving:
St Joseph's Catholic Parish has a policy of supporting only bona-fide charities whose activities are entirely in accord with the teachings of the Catholic Church. In order to safeguard parishioners' consciences and legitimate expectations it is important that any money given to the parish, or through parish groups, be used only for purposes which do not compromise Catholic moral teaching.
All parish groups and individual parishioners are asked to arrange and cooperate with Lenten fund-raising for this year's two Catholic Charities. Support these two projects by promoting fund-raising opportunities and giving generously to our Lenten Charity events, and special collections after all weekend Masses until Palm Sunday.
Save the Saveable Schools in the Sudan is a project of Aid to the Church in Need who are responding to a special request from the Sudanese bishops to help keep their 200 schools open.
Bishop Daniel Adwok (Auxiliary Bishop of Khartoum), who coordinates the schools programme, explained: The schools of 'Save the Saveable' are the only ones in northern Sudan where Catechism lessons are given in class
. Other agencies are reluctant to back this scheme because of its commitment to Christianity. Teaching the Catechism of the Catholic Church is essential in a region dogged by extremism and intolerance and where, for the last quarter of a century, the people have endured violence, poverty, persecution and displacement on a record-breaking scale.
Thanks to the 'Save the Saveable Schools' programme in north Sudan, 20,000 Christian children can dare to dream of a brighter future. These are the only schools in the region that provide full-time Christian education, teaching the Catechism. The bishops rely on £500,000 per year from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to help keep the schools open and the Faith in Sudan alive.
£25 will sponsor a child at a Save the Saveable School for one year. This includes teaching and materials. The full range of subjects is taught, including English. Catechetical instruction is given as part of the curriculum.*
Read Persecuted and Forgotten?, ACN's report on Christians in the Sudan and elsewhere, oppressed for the Faith in 2007/08. Pick up a leaflet about Save the Saveable Schools and prayer cards from ACN's National Director's pre-Lenten visit to St Joseph's.
Find out more at www.acnuk.org, or click here for info about the Save the Saveable Schools campaign.
Medialle is a new charity, founded by Catholic nuns, brothers and priests, to support women, young men and children who have been freed from the sex trafficking industry here in the UK, enabling them to regain their dignity and self-worth. The Medialle Trust does this by providing safe housing, and offering opportunities for physical and psycological healing and rehabilitation. Medialle raises awareness of the plight of those who are enslaved and exploited in the sex-trafficking industry in the UK, and campaigns on this issue.
The UK is primarily a destination country for trafficking. Hundreds of young men, women and children are trafficked each year to Britain. Research carried out for the Home Office estimates that there are 4,000 women trafficked into prostitution at any one time in the UK.
A 22 year old Eastern European women had come to the UK on the promise of 'a good job' in a hotel and an income she could send back to her impoverished grandparents. Instead, in circumstances typical for many, she was locked in a basement and told that her family back home would be killed unless she worked as a prostitute, receiving up to 40 clients a day. This young woman had to earn her captors £300 a day to pay off the debt of £20,000 she had alledgedly incurred in the journey to Britain. She was subjected to a fine she refused to have anal or unprotected sex, or if a client did not find her attractive. She was regularly gang-raped and beaten to prevent her from escaping.
A couple of years ago, a young girl found her way here to St Joseph's when she managed to escape from enslavement behind the high walls of a house on Kingston Hill. A parish family and our priests cared for her while the SVP worked with the authorities and organised her return to her family in Malawi.
Newsletters etc are available at www.medialle.co.uk.
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1 Montem Road, New Malden, Surrey, KT3 3QW | tel: 020 8942 2602 | Email: stjoseph.newmalden@btinternet.com
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