By EMMALEE ITALIA
Contributing Editor
The annual National Collection for the Black and Indian Missions will be taken up in the Diocese Feb. 18, the first weekend of Lent, continuing some 140 years of support for Black and Indian peoples of the United States.
Beginning at the direction of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1884, the funds collected will be distributed via the Black and Indian Mission Office as grants to dioceses across the country. The collection was the first of its kind established in the U.S. Programming that benefits from the collection includes evangelization efforts, faith formation, building projects, rural parish subsidies, college scholarship endowments, and education both in parish religious education programs and Catholic schools. Recipient populations hail from Black, Native American, Eskimo and Aleute communities.
“Your financial support of the Black and Indian Mission Office enables us to help form children in faith, educate young people and build hope – a hope so often hard to find in the areas our missionaries serve,” wrote Father Maurice Henry Sands, executive director of BIMO, on the organization’s website.
The BIMO office comprises three distinct but related organizations: the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions (est. 1874); the Commission for the Catholic Missions (est. 1884) and the Catholic Negro-American Mission Board (est. 1907). Each organization cooperates with diocesan communities to spread the Gospel and to respond to real and pressing needs.
The support of prayer and fasting are also crucial, the website states. “Pray for those whose lives are enriched by the support of our office. Pray for the success of our missionaries’ work… Our missionaries serve many people in great need – and even danger – due to alcoholism, drug abuse, gang violence and domestic disturbances … your fasting makes a difference.”
For more information visit https://blackandindianmission.org/.