“Home Missions” is the name for dioceses and parishes in the United States, including its territories and former territories, which cannot provide basic pastoral services to Catholics without outside help.

Priests and seminarians and Catholic faithful themselves are few and funding for priestly formation and lay ministry training is hard to come by, especially in these difficult economic times.

Since 1998, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops has held a collection in parishes around the country on the last weekend of April to help relieve the situation. This year, the collection, known as the Catholic Home Mission Appeal, will be held in parishes throughout the Trenton Diocese April 28 and 29.

The appeal focuses on areas where the Catholic Church is poorly established in our country. Overseen by the USCCB’s Office of National Collections, the grantees this year include 87 Latin and Eastern Catholic dioceses over a wide geographic area ranging from Appalachia to the Midwest to the Southwest in the United States to Pago Pago in American Samoa.

One hundred percent of the funds raised by the appeal will go toward a wide range of pastoral services including evangelization, religious education, the maintenance of mission parishes, the education of priests, deacons and religious so that Catholics can expand their knowledge of the faith and hand it down to the next generations.

The Catholic Home Missions Appeal helps meet the faith needs of Catholics in these missions. It helps many small parishes stay alive.

For more information, contact the Office of National Collections, Catholic Home Missions Appeal, 3211 Fourth Street, NE, Washington, D.C. 20017-1194.