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CUBA: New calendar teaching the Faith as time goes by
By John Pontifex
The Catechetical Calendar for Cuba 2010
Busy Catholics in Cuba wanting to organise their diaries can learn their faith at the same time – thanks to a key calendar project which has received major funding from Aid to the Church in Need.
Since the initiative was founded in 1997, the Catechetical Calendars for Cuba scheme has proved so popular that for 2010 the bishops have requested 750,000 of them.
To that end, the UK office of Aid to the Church in Need has given £22,440 to support the project.
The project was one of the biggest aid payments made this month by the charity’s UK office, based in Sutton, Surrey.
Full of religious images, the calendars come complete with extracts from Papal messages, short studies on the lives of the saints and background information on important feasts.
The impetus behind the scheme is to help the island’s Catholic community recover from decades of tight censorship of religious activity in which many key feasts and seasons were at risk of being forgotten.
Christmas, for example, was only permitted as a public celebration in 1997 in the run up to Pope John Paul II’s landmark visit to Cuba in January 1998.
1997 was in fact the first year for the calendar project. Aid to the Church in Need helped with the printing of 15,000 of them and the charity has continued its support in line with the increase in demand.
In an island affected by widespread poverty, the calendar appeals to people who cannot afford books and other educational materials.
Other major schemes backed by Aid to the Church in Need UK this month include help for the renovation of a monastery and the construction of a parish centre building both in Lebanon.
In nearby Egypt, the charity gave £21,450 to provide 3,000 Mass stipends for 50 priests in a Coptic Catholic diocese in the centre of the country.
Mass stipends also went in support of 200 priests in India (Jamshedpur, Cochin and Nagpur), 60 missionaries in Cameroon, 80 priests in Burundi, 71 priests in Thies, Senegal, and 33 priests in Islamabad-Rawalpindi diocese, Pakistan.
Elsewhere in Pakistan, there was support for seminarians from the diocese of Faisalabad under Bishop Joseph Coutts, who won huge support last month during his visit to the UK where as the guest of Aid to the Church in Need he opened the charity’s Scottish office and presided at the annual Westminster Event.
Other seminarians to benefit from the aid payments include students in Russia and Romania.
The charity’s UK National Director Neville Kyrke-Smith said: “Thanks to the kindness of the benefactors of Aid to the Church in Need, we are able to offer the hope of Christ to Christians in Cuba and other parts of the world where the Church is facing real difficulty.
“This Advent, we are able to proclaim the hope of Christ’s coming amidst suffering and adversity.”