Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe

Seminarians in a church in Eastern Europe

On Ash Wednesday, a special collection is held for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe. Your gifts to this collection make a difference for those living in more than 25 countries, many of which were under former Communist rule.

Your gifts will help to train seminarians and lay leaders, will support social service programs, youth ministry, pastoral and catechetical centers, and schools, will build and renovate churches, and will assist the evangelization work of Catholic media.

Ukraine

In Ukraine, money from the collection is helping in the rebuilding of communities and churches destroyed during the war, and it is also helping neighboring countries, such as Croatia and Poland, in their efforts to help the thousands of Ukrainians who have lost their homes. For example, a grant through the collection supports a retreat and evangelization program in Poland for teenage refugees. Intended to lead them to encounter Jesus in the sacraments, it also provides opportunities for trauma counseling, creates community with other teen refugees, and helps them acquire skills to build new lives.

Tajikistan

Tajikistan, a former Soviet Republic, is among the countries that receives critical support from the Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe. Tajikistan is a true mission country for the Catholic Church. The Catholic presence is so small that the country does not have a diocese of its own but is an independent mission of the pope's, which is administered by priests from the Institute of the Incarnate Word from Argentina and sisters from the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará. Despite its small size, the community celebrated its first two priestly vocations, as well as a Tajik woman who professed perpetual vows with the sisters. The collection helps the priests and sisters continue their mission by educating the children and providing them with instruction, school supplies, school uniforms, and the food they need to develop intellectually, spiritually, physically, and socially.

Georgia

After decades of persecution, Catholics of the Armenian rite, the Chaldean rite, and the Latin rite have experienced a new era of freedom since Georgia became independent from the Soviet Union. These communities have set about rebuilding the Church, but poverty and remote, rural locations have made this work more difficult.

You can read here how the collection is making a difference to people in Georgia or view the video below. There are approximately 80,000 Catholics in Georgia practicing the Latin, Georgian-Byzantine, and Armenian rites. They kept their faith through Communist rule, even when some were not allowed to enter churches and priests were killed.