WASHINGTON - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Subcommittee on Catholic Home Missions convened this fall to review grant requests for the 2025-2026 year. The subcommittee awarded more than $7.8 million in grants for 69 dioceses and eparchies. These grants are made possible through the generosity of the Catholic faithful to the Catholic Home Missions Appeal, an annual collection taken in many U.S. dioceses.

Home mission dioceses and Eastern Catholic eparchies are found across the United States and its territories, many in regions with small Catholic populations in rural areas affected by economic hardship. Grants from the subcommittee help mission dioceses here in the U.S. support parish and diocesan operations, as well as ministries of evangelization, catechesis, and healing that grow and strengthen the Church.

“When parishioners contribute to the Catholic Home Missions Appeal, they bring faith, hope and love where it is most needed, regardless the amount of their gift. Their gifts have a profound, positive impact on Catholics who face poverty or the isolation of being a small, minority faith,” said Bishop Chad Zielinski of New Ulm, chairman of the Subcommittee on Catholic Home Missions.

Among the recipients:

• The Diocese of Rapid City’s Standing Rock Reservation Ministry conducts home visitation and parish faith formation activities led by three Franciscan sisters and a priest who serve members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The ministry team cares for about 500 Catholics at four parishes on the 2.3 million acre reservation, while offering accompaniment and social support to 8,000 other residents of all faiths.
• The Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, received a grant for its Office of Deliverance Ministry to provide spiritual and emotional care for those who experience spiritual wounds and oppression by sin. This ministry receives more than 100 visits a month from people seeking spiritual liberation and healing through prayers of deliverance and the sacraments of Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick.
• The Syro-Malankara Eparchy of St. Mary Queen of Peace traces its roots to the missionary work of St. Thomas the Apostle in India, but its 24 priests serve about 11,000 parishioners across the United States. Although the eparchy (the term for an Eastern Catholic diocese) has no paid lay staff, the grant empowers a wide range of ministry, including a youth summer camp, retreats, family conventions and vocational discernment.

“These stories reveal the wide range of spiritual and financial needs that the Catholic Home Missions Appeal addresses,” Bishop Zielinski said. “Parishioners in mission dioceses already give sacrificially from their limited means. My prayer is that their example of faith will inspire the rest of us dig deeper to help our neighbors carry out the mission that Jesus has entrusted to us.”

For more information on Catholic Home Missions, please see:https://www.usccb.org/committees/catholic-home-missions 

For those who have not yet donated but wish to support this work, #iGiveCatholic accepts funds for the Catholic Home Missions program.

###

Sister Mary Youssef, Secretary General of the Franciscan Sisters of the Cross who run the Psychiatric Hospital of the Cross in Lebanon, talks about the joy of the sisters in welcoming Pope Leo XIV’s visit to the medical center on December 2.

Read all

 

Eligius (also known as Eloi) was born around 590 near Limoges in France. He became an extremely skillful metalsmith and was appointed master of the mint under King Clotaire II of Paris. Eligius developed a close friendship with the King and his reputation as an outstanding metalsmith became widespread. With his fame came fortune. Eligius was very generous to the poor, ransomed many slaves, and built several churches and a monastery at Solignac. He also erected a major convent in Paris with ...

During a meeting with bishops, priests, consecrated men and women, and pastoral workers at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa, Pope Leo XIV highlights coexistence, education, and support for migrants as concrete paths toward peace.

Read all

 

Despite the rain, crowds with flags and umbrellas welcome Pope Leo XIV at the Monastery of St. Maron in Annaya, the resting place of St. Charbel Makhlouf - "a saint that represents Lebanon."

Read all

 

On the second day of his Apostolic Visit to Lebanon, Pope Leo XIV visits the tomb of St. Charbel, saying he taught “prayer to those who live without God, silence to those who live amid noise ... and poverty to those who pursue riches.”

Read all

 

Pope Leo XIV makes a 30-minute visit to the Carmelite Sisters of the Theotokos in Harissa, on the evening of his first day in Lebanon.

Read all

 

Pope Leo XIV concludes his Apostolic Journey to Türkiye with a visit to the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of Istanbul and Divine Liturgy with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

Read all

 

Pope Leo XIV meets with Lebanese civil authorities in Beirut as he begins his Apostolic Journey to Lebanon, urging the country's young people to speak “the language of hope,” which he said has enabled Lebanon “always to start again.”

Read all

 

ISTANBUL (CNS) -- As he had done throughout his visit to Turkey, Pope Leo XIV spent his last morning in the country reaffirming the Catholic Church's commitment to the search for Christian unity.

The key symbol of that was the pope's presence at the Divine Liturgy celebrated by Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople Nov. 30, the feast of St. Andrew, patron of the patriarchate.

For decades the popes and patriarchs have sent delegations to each other's patronal feast celebrations -- the Vatican's celebration of the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul June 29 and the patriarchate's celebration of St. Andrew's feast Nov. 30.

St. Peter and St. Andrew were brothers and were the first of the 12 Apostles to be called by Jesus.

After the liturgy, the pope and patriarch went to a balcony where they jointly blessed the people gathered below. 

Patriarch Bartholomew had been present at most of the events on Pope Leo's itinerary in Turkey, including the meeting in Ankara Nov. 27 with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and government and civic officials. The patriarch hosted the commemoration of the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea Nov. 28, and he attended Pope Leo's Mass for the country's Catholic communities Nov. 29.

At the liturgy Nov. 30 in the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George, Pope Leo spoke about how for 60 years Catholics and Orthodox have followed "a path of reconciliation, peace and growing communion." 

The increasingly cordial relations have been "fostered through frequent contact, fraternal meetings and promising theological dialogue," he said. "And today we are called even more to commit ourselves to the restoration of full communion."

Especially important work has been done by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, the pope said, but he noted that tensions among the Orthodox churches have led some of them to suspend their participation.

The commission's last plenary session was held in Egypt in 2023; the most noticeable absence was that of the Russian Orthodox Church, which broke relations with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2018 when the patriarch recognized the autonomy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Pope Leo used his greeting at the Divine Liturgy to confirm that, "in continuity with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and my predecessors," the pursuit of full communion among Christians "is one of the priorities of the Catholic Church. In particular, it is one of the priorities of my ministry as Bishop of Rome, whose specific role in the universal Church is to be at the service of all, building and safeguarding communion and unity."

In his homily at the liturgy, Patriarch Bartholomew restated the Orthodox commitment to unity and called for common Christian efforts to protect the environment and to end wars.

"We cannot be complicit in the bloodshed taking place in Ukraine and other parts of the world and remain silent in the face of the exodus of Christians from the cradle of Christianity" in the Holy Land, the patriarch said. 

Pope Leo's day had begun with a visit to Archbishop Sahak II Mashalian, the Armenian Apostolic patriarch of Constantinople, at his cathedral in Istanbul.

The celebrations of the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and its statement of faith that formed the basis of the Nicene Creed, are an affirmation that "we must draw from this shared apostolic faith in order to recover the unity that existed in the early centuries between the Church of Rome and the ancient Oriental Churches," the pope said.

"We must also take inspiration from the experience of the early church in order to restore full communion," he said; the goal is "a communion which does not imply absorption or domination, but rather an exchange of the gifts received by our churches from the Holy Spirit for the glory of God the Father and the edification of the body of Christ."

While Pope Leo paid tribute to "the courageous Christian witness of the Armenian people throughout history, often amid tragic circumstances," he was not more explicit about the politically sensitive subject of what many call the "Armenian genocide," when an estimated 1.5 million Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks in 1915-18.

Mardik Evadian, a local business owner who was present for the pope's visit, told reporters that for Armenians in Turkey "it is not important" that the pope use the word "genocide."

Armenians know what happened and remember their loved ones who were killed, he said, "but we are living in this country; maybe in old times there were pogroms, but now it is peacetime."