PAPAL CHARITY IN 2000: SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS

VATICAN CITY, APR 10, 2001 (VIS) - During the year 2000 Papal charitable donations amounted to a total of $7 million, according to a communique recently published by the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum," which this July 15th will celebrate its 30th anniversary.
"Cor Unum" is a dicastery of the Roman Curia whose primary task is the coordination of the activities of ecclesial organizations, associations, and groups involved in socio-charitable work for populations in countries struck by natural disasters and war, and in human promotion in developing countries.

This year's communique recalls that Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, president of the dicastery, was sent to express the Holy Father's personal solicitude and the attentive closeness of the Church and Apostolic See among the populations hit by the earthquake in Taiwan at the end of 1999, those effected by the flooding in Mozambique in March of 2000, and in Valle d'Aosta, Italy, in October of 2000. The Holy Father, through "Cor Unum," has given $1,027,800 to populations afflicted by various emergencies.

Furthermore, "Cor Unum" supported projects of human and Christian promotion in various parts of the world - for those without shelter, the elderly, abandoned children, and the sick - through the initiative of particular Churches, and especially through the work of religious institutes and local Catholic organizations. During the year 2000, the dicastery gave $888,805 in the Holy Father's name.

The communique also reports that the administrative council of the "John Paul II Foundation for the Sahel," established by Pope John Paul II in 1984 to give the Church in the Sahel region the tools to fight against drought and desertification, approved the financing of 312 projects amounting to a total of US$ 2,992,097.26.

The administrative council of the "Populorum Progressio" Foundation, created by John Paul II in 1992 to encourage the human and Christian promotion of poor indigenous, mixed-race, and Afro-American farmworkers in Latin America, reviewed 258 projects, financing 209 in 20 Central American, Latin American, and Caribbean countries, amounting to a total of US$ 1,923,500.

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