Top photo credit: USCCB graphic
Strengthening the Church at home by supporting essential pastoral programs in financially challenged dioceses and eparchies in the United States is the goal of the annual Catholic Home Missions Appeal.
This year, parishes in the Diocese will participate in the Catholic Home Missions Appeal at all weekend Masses the weekend of April 25-26.
The appeal, launched in 1998 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, supports dioceses and parishes in the United States, including its territories and former territories, which cannot provide basic pastoral services to Catholics without outside help. Such areas include Appalachia, the South, the Southwest along the Mexican border, the Rocky Mountain states, Alaska, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and remote island chains like the Marshalls and the Carolines in the Pacific.
Basic pastoral services the appeal supports include the celebration of Mass and the Sacraments, religious education and ministry training for priests, deacons, religious sisters, brothers and lay people. The appeal may also provide grants to other U.S. dioceses for particular projects and to organization and religious communities engaged in missionary work.
Contributions offered in the Diocese of Trenton’s parishes for the 2025 collection amounted to $143,982. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced Dec. 1 that 69 mission dioceses and Eastern Catholic eparchies had been awarded a collective total of more than $7.8 million in grants based on the last year’s campaign. The grant allocations ranged from $10,000 to approximately $145,000 and were determined by the USCCB’s Subcommittee on Catholic Home Missions.