From The Pastor’s Desk

Canon Law requires that each parish once a year has a missionary priest visit and explain their work and ask for an offering to help with their ministry.  This next weekend we welcome Fr. Barnabas who belongs to the Indian Missionary Society, known as IMS.  The Indian Missionary Society was founded on November 3rd in 1941 in the northern part of India.  Their purpose is PIONEERING EVANGELIZATION, to take a non-Christian area, develop and establish a Catholic community and then hand over this new parish to the diocese and begin again in a new area.  The Society is today working in 89 center and parishes spread across 43 dioceses. 

The Society has 222 priests and 150 seminarians, with 7 ordained to the priesthood this year.  The work of the Society includes preaching the Word of God, celebrating Mass in villages and with families, sponsoring children in their education in both primary and secondary schools. They are working to empower women, they have medical camps, social and developmental projects, safe drinking water hand pumps and wells for agricultural irrigation.  They have one HIV/AIDS rehabilitation center for 100 children and 45 adults, one center for adults who are mentally challenged, one for children and another center for hearing impaired children.

The Society is totally depend on the generosity, donations and gifts of their sponsors and benefactors.  Please welcome Fr. Barnabas this weekend while I am on vacation.