“We live difficult times and need to organize,” said the archbishop of Buenos Aires (Argentina), Mons. Jorge García Cuerva by summoning the faithful and people of good will to participate in the annual collection of Cáritas, which this year is carried out under the motto “Let’s continue organizing hope.”
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The collection will take place throughout the country on the weekend of June 7 and 8, and will be held both physically, through envelopes that are distributed in parishes, chapels and schools; o through digital media. Within that framework, the prelate especially invited “that we can be more generous and supportive than ever.”
“We live difficult times and need to organize, we need to be together, we all need to have reasons for hope. And what more reason for hope than commitment and solidarity with those who have less,” said Mons. García Cuerva in a VIDEOMANSAJE.
In addition, as every year, thousands of volunteers will take to the streets with polls, with the mission of encouraging citizens to accompany this new collection with their solidarity.
“The next weekend, we are all Caritas. The annual collection of Caritas summons us all, I ask you to participate and commit ourselves,” he summarized.
Fr. Sebastián García, vice president of Cáritas Buenos Aires, added that the annual collection “is a beautiful opportunity, not only because it allows us to continue collecting money, but also allows us to make known, testify, narrate and continue sharing with all the way in which Cáritas Buenos Aires accompanies life in an integral way in its multiple and diverse ways”.
Therefore, in addition to making an economic contribution “depositing what you can, whatever comes out of your heart”, it prompted to join “as an active agent of charity spreading the annual collection of Caritas.”
“We continue to organize hope, hope that does not disappoint because it is put in Jesus that makes all things new and teaches us to look at ourselves and love ourselves as brothers,” he said.
Where does Cáritas receive?
Sofía Zadara, executive director of Cáritas Argentina, clarified in a Interview with Canal Orbe 21 That although it is often linked to the institution only with direct assistance in the food and the donation of clothing, there are other active work lines.
Among them, he mentioned “a very large line of education and early childhood”, another that has to do with “accompanying the social economy, which today is also necessary to formalize”, and many initiatives in the neighborhoods: “Cooperatives, entrepreneurs, productive units”, in which it is worth “continuing to contribute” because it is a “multiplier” job, he considered.
He also referred to the microcredit line, because “sometimes the family needs that first push and then formalized.”
“That is also nice to know, that it is not an aid that ends there, but that multiplies and continues for others,” he said.
“We also have the entire part of addiction of addictions, there we cling, we will also hold on the hand of the households of Christ, but it has to do with responding to ‘life as it comes,” he explained, answer questions such as: “What happens to that person? What happens to you? How much does it lose? How much of those ties did not have and how we rebuild from there?” With them, the work can range from managing a ID to get a job, he exemplified.
Within the food area, Zadara explained that a transition is being carried out to call it “food security”, that is, one step further, linked to the nutritional quota, and also to value the work of women who are voluntary, who prepare the food and that many times “are having as bad as that child (…) to which we feed.”
Cáritas also deals with the community health area, of integration of popular neighborhoods. “What we want is to put together community where there is no water, there is no light,” he explained. “And there is a huge decision to arrive with chapels, animation of promoters, referents, neighborhood centers, which helps assemble the community.”
On the other hand, he recalled that historically, Cáritas addressed climatic emergencies, a problem that today “is quite in the mat,” so “the approach has to be more integral,” and has to include a preventive stage, work during the emergency, and subsequent reconstruction, where many times the focus is in the housing.
“Each line we think of Cáritas Nacional is part of an listening that was made in the territory, and everything pays for this integral human development of the communities,” he added.
Julieta Villar
I am a journalist, a graduate in Communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non -governmental organizations. Since 2016 I dedicate myself to Catholic journalism, first in the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as a correspondent for ACI Press for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.