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Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010

Week of April 3, 2000

Archbishop urges support for Share Lent

Dear Friends in Christ:

Sincerest thanks to you! This past year has witnessed, yet again, your remarkably generous spirit!

A total of 13,585 signatures from our archdiocese flooded the Development and Peace regional office in Edmonton conveying to the G8 leaders a strong message to cancel the debt of impoverished countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Our dollars for the victims of disasters and war for Hurricane Mitch, Kosovo, Turkey, East Timor, Taiwan and India helped Development and Peace send emergency relief aid.

The generous welcome, in Lent last year, to our Peruvian guest, Lucy Chavez was deeply appreciated. Lucy, a lawyer working with the Peruvian Bishops' Social Action Commission, met with parishioners and students reassuring us that our support for the release of political prisoners and the financial help Development and Peace gives the commission, are crucial.

The annual Share Lent Campaign was established by the Canadian bishops when they founded the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace in 1967. As a result, Development and Peace is our organization that reaches out:

  • To improve the living conditions of people in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean through partnerships established in education and development projects.
  • To respond with emergency relief to the devastation of natural disasters.
  • To encourage and support Peruvian women through communal meals; help to fisherfolk in Senegal and landless peasants in Brazil.
Here in the Edmonton Archdiocese we have a proud record:
  • Financial support through the yearly Share Lent Campaign.
  • Interest in educational material about Development and Peace.
  • Parish and school involvement.
Lent provides Christians with a great opportunity to reflect on our own lives as well as the circumstances of others throughout our global planet. I invite you during this Share Lent Campaign to express your continued solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the countries of the developing world.

Each one of them thanks you, the Canadian bishops thank you and as your archbishop, I thank you, for your spirit of Christian almsgiving.

Thomas Collins
Archbishop of Edmonton

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