Give Hope to Jesus in Disguise is Plea of the Catholic Relief Services Collection

WASHINGTON—The 2010 Catholic Relief Services Collection calls Catholics to Give Hope to Jesus in Disguise. The collection will be taken in most parishes around the country the weekend of March 14.

Be it eliminating food crises, providing health care and clean water or giving immigrants and refugees a fair chance in the legal system, the work of The Catholic Relief Services Collection is extraordinary.

The recent tragedy in Haiti illustrates the essential works funded by the collection. In January 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, Haiti, taking an estimated 200,000 lives, injuring 194,000, and affecting 3,000,000 people. Organizations funded through The Catholic Relief Services Collection have been reaching out to the victims to give hope.

• At St. Francois de Sales Hospital in Port-au-Prince, wards collapsed trapping many inside. Catholic Relief Services’ emergency health personnel helped organize a team of Belgian doctors, volunteer nurses, and firefighters to get the hospital up and running for patients who  desperately needed medical attention.
• With thousands of children separated from their families and vulnerable to human traffickers, Migration and Refugee Services of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is facilitating family reunification where possible and determining how to meet the needs of children left alone.

The Catholic Relief Services Collection funds six Catholic programs including Catholic Relief Services (CRS), CLINIC (Catholic Legal Immigration Service, Inc), the Holy Father's Relief Fund, the USCCB Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development (JPHD), the USCCB Department of Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) and the USCCB Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church.

To learn more about The Catholic Relief Services Collection and its beneficiaries visit www.usccb.org/nationalcollections.

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Keywords: National Collections, The Catholic Relief Services Collection, Catholic Relief Services, CRS; Migration and Refugee Services, MRS; Justice, Peace and Human Development, JHPD; Cultural Diversity in the Church, Catholic Bishops, USCCB