Parish News & Information

2023 Lenten Almsgiving

This Lent, we are partnering with Catholic Extension to help feed the religious in Cuba for a year. You can make a big difference by helping feed 1,000 priests, sisters, and pastoral leaders in the 11 Catholic dioceses of Cuba for a year.

You can donate either by using the special envelopes in our Church or by going to our online Give Central page by clicking here.

If giving by check, please be sure to include the words Lent Almsgiving in the memo line of your check.

Chicago-based Catholic Extension works in solidarity with people in America’s poorest regions to build up vibrant and transformative Catholic faith communities. We seek to deepen and expand our commitment to Catholic faith communities by providing resources to develop leaders, ministries, and facilities, while inviting more people across our country to invest in this work.

Catholic Extension is a papal society that is answering Pope Francis’ call to go out to America’s “peripheries.”

Cuba is only 90 miles off the shores of the U.S. There are 11 Catholic dioceses in Cuba, including three archdioceses. The island has about 1,000 priests, sisters, and pastoral leaders. With more than 11 million inhabitants, Cuba is the largest and most populated country in the Caribbean. It is estimated that 80% of the population of Cuba is Catholic.

The Church in Cuba is now presented with a historic moment. The government has a new openness towards the Church and continues to return previously confiscated churches back to the dioceses.

Vital support is needed in a country where practically everyone makes $20 a month. Daily life is hard in Cuba and it’s getting more difficult. There are regular shortages of food and basic necessities throughout the year. This is particularly observed in the rural areas of the country. Food is in short supply in Cuba, and hunger is real, long lines for bread and other staples are daily occurrences. People cannot make small everyday purchases with dollars. The only legal way to buy items is to stand in the long lines, to purchase items with the national currency. This process takes hours, has limited sales, and can become problematic.

In a country where the government controls every aspect of people’s lives, even what career they can pursue or what they can say in public without being arrested, the Catholic Church has been a place of refuge and hope. In each Cuban parish, not only do they offer religious services, they feed hungry children, provide after school tutoring, care for the sick and elderly languishing alone in their neighborhoods, provide help to those with basic medical needs, and have a profound effect on Cuban society beyond the four walls of the Church.

“These communities are the future of our Church. These are the places where our Church is at its most inspiring. It is our responsibility, as fellow Catholics, to nurture these places of hope. Come join us on this journey and help us to build up Catholic faith communities and watch what happens.” - Father Jack Wall, President, Catholic Extension

Scroll down to read more about this wonderful opportunity as well as view photos and listen to a video message from Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez

In partnership with Catholic Extension, St. Paul of the Cross is helping feed all the priests, sisters, and pastoral leaders in Cuba for a year. Cuba is only 90 miles off the shores of the U.S. There are 11 Catholic dioceses in Cuba, including three archdioceses. San Cristóbal de la Habana (i.e. Havana) is the largest. The Archbishop, Juan de la Caridad Garcia, was elevated to Cardinal by Pope Francis in October 2019. The island has about 1,000 priests, sisters, and pastoral leaders. With more than 11 million inhabitants, Cuba is the largest and most populated country in the Caribbean. It is estimated that 80% of the population of Cuba is Catholic.

During Catholic Extension’s 118-year history, their mission to sustain and build up faith communities has occasionally taken them outside of our borders to respond to foreign appeals.

Catholic Extension has had a long relationship with the Church in Latin America. During the persecution of Catholics in Mexico in the early 1900s, Catholic Extension provided support to refugees and educated Mexican seminarians in Texas. We have funded the Church in Puerto Rico since 1908, helping to construct most of its churches and recently extending funds to rebuild churches and communities after the hurricanes and earthquakes.

Catholic Extension believes that we as Catholics have a mandate to help our fellow Catholic brothers and sisters in need, especially those in dire situations. It is our responsibility to reach out to the margins, go to the peripheries, and be part of the universal Church. Let’s help feed those that are feeding the hungry on the island of Cuba!

The socialist revolution of 1959, and the subsequent US trade embargo, froze the island in time and posed a unique challenge to the Catholic Church in Cuba, leading to the deterioration of many of its churches. For almost 60 years, the Cuban government did not permit the Catholic Church to build any new churches.

The Church in Cuba is now presented with a historic moment. The government has a new openness towards the Church and continues to return previously confiscated churches back to the dioceses. At the same time, diplomatic relations with the United States have improved, allowing American organizations to provide assistance. Religious freedom has slowly improved.

Catholics in Cuba are receiving attention from the highest levels of the Church. In 2015, Pope Francis visited the island and was met with great enthusiasm. His visit followed the first papal visit by Pope John Paul II in 1998 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.

Pope Francis brought a new sense of opening and hope for the Church in Cuba. He honored Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, patron saint of Cuba, saying that she is, along with the Cuban people, “sustaining the hope which preserves people’s dignity in the most difficult situations and championing the promotion of all that gives dignity to the human person.”

In spite of enduring persecution and isolation for nearly six decades, Cuba is one of the great stories of heroism and fortitude in the Catholic Church during our lifetimes. Let’s help feed those that are feeding the hungry on the island of Cuba!

Above: Pope John Paul II statue in Cuba

Vital support is needed in a country where practically everyone makes $20 a month. Daily life is hard in Cuba and it’s getting more difficult. For example, many of us in America have the romantic idea of Cuba’s old cars—which are actually used as a ploy for tourists in downtown Havana— an area that local Cubans call “the movie set,” because it is so far removed from the lived reality of most Cubans. Only the lucky people even have cars. Transportation is a constant challenge for Cuban people. Many Cubans, travel by horse or bike, but most get around by walking, or catching a ride in the back of dump trucks. This is the real Cuba.

There are regular shortages of food and basic necessities throughout the year. This is particularly observed in the rural areas of the country. Food is in short supply in Cuba, and hunger is real, long lines for bread and other staples are daily occurrences. People cannot make small every-day purchases with dollars. The only legal way to buy items, is to stand in the long lines, to purchase items with the national currency. This process takes hours, have limited sales, and can become problematic.

In the wake of recent policy changes both in the U.S. and in Cuba, the daily struggle of many Cubans has only intensified in recent years. Yet, the Catholic Church, its parishes, and social agency are a beacon of hope to the Cuban people. In a country where the government controls every aspect of people’s lives, even what career they can pursue or what they can say in public without being arrested, the Catholic Church has been a place of refuge and hope. In each Cuban parish, not only do they offer religious services…they feed hungry children, provide after school tutoring, they care for the sick and elderly languishing alone in their neighborhoods, they provide help to those with basic medical needs and have a profound effect on Cuban society beyond the four walls of the Church.

Since 2016, Catholic Extension has made a commitment to helping the Cuban Catholic Church with one of its most pressing needs: the repair and construction of churches and church facilities, especially in rural areas. These churches offer spiritual, emotional, and charitable support to their community. Even though Catholicism has existed in Cuba for over 500 years, there are very few parishes and church facilities to serve the people. Today, due to lack of transportation and few parish facilities, many Cuban Catholics worship together in peoples’ homes, called “casas de mission”, or house missions.

This is why the Cuban bishops have asked Catholic Extension to help them build and repair churches to serve some of their more far-flung house missions where there are no parish facilities, but where there is great faith among the people, as well as great need among the poor.

Catholic Extension has built over 45 churches and pastoral centers in Cuba, so their presence is known and established. The church structures Catholic Extension supports in Cuba are often very simple, but the transformation that takes place in these facilities is very profound. Not only do these facilities provide space for spiritual services—sacramental celebrations and religious formation, but they are also places where the Catholic Church can extend its charitable care to the most vulnerable people of Cuba.

Also, with permission of both the U.S. and Cuban governments, Catholic Extension and its partners have organized large shipments of medical supplies to Cuba, which have reached tens of thousands of people in need. These shipments are coordinated through Cáritas Cuba. As the largest private social service provider on the island, no other NGO has done more than Cáritas Cuba to alleviate suffering and transform Cuban society.

Cuba is sadly one of the most troubled places on the globe today, but Catholic Extension’s most recent rebuilding project provided a dose of real hope.

On a weekly basis, Catholic Extension receives updates from their diocesan partners that Cuba’s economy has almost entirely collapsed, resulting in starvation, desperation, societal unrest, and brutally repressive political backlash. Some of their partners say that the situation in Cuba is the worst it has ever been in its history.

But amid these struggles, faith, hope, and resilience remain strong among the people of Cuba, who turn to the Church as their place of relief, support, and strength.

The newly restored Our Lady of Fatima Pastoral Center in Sevilla, Cuba, a rural community on the eastern end of the island, has already supported hundreds of vulnerable people. This center is a safe haven where people can gather as a community to learn, to pray, to eat and to support each other during these very trying times. The center offers a variety of services that help enrich people’s lives, including religious services, education for different age groups, as well as social services like meals for hungry school-aged children, outreach programs for pregnant teens, help to the poor and elderly, and many more.

Most importantly this center is delivering perhaps the scarcest resource in Cuba at this time: joy!!

The “reordenamiento monetario” (economic reform), COVID-19 pandemic, and a surge in Dengue fever have accounted for a very difficult reality for the Cuban people. Your support will help provide food to priests, religious sisters, and pastoral leaders in Cuba. People in Cuba are starving and dying in the streets. The religious in Cuba are so humble and selfless that they give all the food away to the people and will not take up the cause for themselves.

The government recently changed the currency in Cuba – which downgraded the value of the dollar. For example, 1 Cuban Peso equals .042 U.S. dollar.

A priest in Cuba* told Catholic Extension that, “this has been one of the most difficult years for everyone on the island, due to the profound financial crisis as a result of our country’s ‘reordenamiento economico’ (economic reform) which, far from benefiting our suffering people, has placed us in extreme poverty, and this has affected the Church as the inseparable and incarnated part of the people, that we are. Everything has been affected even more due to the pandemic. May God bless you and give you back 100%, as stated in the Holy Scripture. We have you in our prayers always. Let us pray for each other.”

“With the economic reform salaries were considerably elevated, but the price of goods was elevated even higher making it very difficult to obtain basic need items and food. Your support will make it possible for priests, religious sisters, and pastoral leaders to conduct their pastoral work at their best capacity, without worrying about not being able to purchase food. Thank you for making this help possible and we pray for all of you.” – a women religious serving in Cuba*

Catholic Extension is able to provide support to the Cuban people through diplomatic channels through the Vatican. Each time Catholic Extension has helped rebuild a church in Cuba --people fill that church, and they flock to that church for support, both spiritual and humanitarian. Let’s help feed those that are feeding the hungry on the island of Cuba!

*Names not disclosed due to privacy