sfca-annual-report

IN 2022 THE SOLIDARITY FUND FOR THE CHURCH IN AFRICA distributed 91 grants, totaling more than $2.6 million, so that bishops’ conferences across the continent can help dioceses to support pastoral ministries and form clergy, consecrated religious, and lay leaders to meet the pastoral needs of the growing African Church. About a quarter of those funds were used for leadership formation projects, and another 25% supported construction projects, mostly to repair and renovate essential church infrastructure that has deteriorated in a region where the Church lacks basic resources and faces many obstacles—poverty being chief among them. Other grants promoted justice and peace, evangelization, communications, formation of clergy and religious, youth ministry, catechesis, Catholic schools, and child protection. The four projects featured in this annual report illustrate how your gifts are strengthening the Church in Africa, improving the lives of African Catholics, and bringing the Gospel to people eager to encounter Christ. KENYA

Couples whose marriages were strained or even broken by stress and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic are receiving pastoral support in the Diocese of Nakuru. Grief over the death of loved ones, job loss, hunger, and other traumas have produced an epidemic of alcoholism, divorce, suicide, and even the killing of children. To address this pastoral crisis in its 58 parishes, the diocese is providing families and engaged couples with formation in the Catholic understanding of marriage, and it is teaching the interpersonal skills necessary for building and keeping a strong marital union. The program is facilitated by mature Catholic married couples who have been trained

as marriage mentors, in collaboration with priests, religious, and catechists. The mentors help engaged couples to establish solid foundations and assist married couples in crisis. This ministry responds to people who enjoy support from family and parish life, but it is also reaching out to those who lack secure and supportive communities—such as prisoners, homeless families, prostitutes, long distance truck drivers, and mariners. CAMEROON Cameroon is notorious for its brutal prisons, especially in regions affected by five years of civil war. The US Department of State’s 2022 Human