Good Friday Appeal Assists

Holy Land

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio is urging the Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens to support the collection taken at the Good Friday liturgy in their parishes April 6, which assists the Holy Shrines in the Holy Land and the works of mercy performed by the Church in the Christian community there.

In a letter, Ignace Moussa Cardinal Daoud, prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, stressed to the world’s bishops that the political and economic crisis in the Holy Land “shows evidence each day of unspeakable suffering.”

The situation there “impresses on all of us that there is an absolute and urgent need to support our brothers and sisters in this land,” he said.

Under the guidance of the Franciscan friars, who are custodians of the Holy Land shrines and who coordinate pastoral and charitable programs, a 24-unit housing project for poor Christian families in Bethlehem and the St. Francis Home for the Elderly in Nazareth were completed last year.

In addition, Terra Santa schools for boys and girls in Bethlehem were renovated, as were the Wedding Church of Cana of Galilee and the SS.Joachim and Anne Convent in Sephoris, which will accommodate a new religious community.

In asking for economic assistance for the Holy Land, Cardinal Daoud described that “portion of the Church” as an area “forever old and forever young.”
Last year, parishioners in Brooklyn and Queens contributed $202,602 to the Good Friday collection. In the two prior years the totals were $215,310 in 2005 and $193,361 in 2004.

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