(OSV News) – An annual collection for the Catholic Church in nations once under Soviet control is "ever more urgent," especially as Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine enters its fourth year – and as the church still works to rebuild in nations scarred by decades of communism, said Bishop Gerald L. Vincke of Salina, Kansas.
Bishop Vincke is chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Subcommittee on Aid to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe. The Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe will take place in many U.S. dioceses on Ash Wednesday, which is March 5.
Donations can also be made through the #iGiveCatholicTogether website.
In 2023, the collection funded 329 projects totaling more than $8.75 million.
Since 2001 alone, the collection has raised more than $187.5 million as of 2023, Mary Mencarini Campbell, executive director of the USCCB’s Office of National Collections, told OSV News ahead of the 2024 collection.
Launched under St. John Paul II in 1991 as communist regimes collapsed throughout Europe, the appeal aids Catholics in 28 European countries in various stages of recovering from longtime totalitarian oppression: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia (Czech Republic), Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Bishop Vincke said in a Feb. 10 USCCB statement that the funds raised by the collection support "the kind of ministry-against-all-odds that we read about in the Book of Acts."
The statement noted that the collection aids both Ukrainian war victims and ministry in nearly 30 countries where the church was persecuted under seven decades of communist rule.
Communist regimes routinely decimated faith communities and their structures by exiling, imprisoning, torturing and killing believers, while seizing houses of worship and destroying religious literature and objects. In Soviet Ukraine, authorities formally liquidated the visible structures of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, with believers forced underground until 1989, some two years before the nation gained its independence from the former Soviet Union.
But the wounds of repression can still be traced in many formerly communist nations.
"Pope John Paul II’s love for the people of Central and Eastern Europe and his appeal to rebuild a Church crushed by decades of violent communist oppression was a hallmark of his pontificate," wrote Bishop Vincke in a reflection ahead of this year's collection. "As we approach the 20th anniversary of the passing of the first Polish pontiff, we recall his legacy and reflect on how we can respond today in the region that continues to see challenges decades after the fall of communism."
In September 2024, during a tour of Ukraine with Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, OSV News visited St. Demetrius Church in Kharkiv, which had been badly desecrated under Soviet rule, with holy images defaced. Parishioners and staff were working to restore the church.
In 2023, the collection funded numerous projects in Ukraine, including the transformation of the UGCC Archeparchy of Lviv's retreat center into a shelter for 800 displaced persons, including nearly 300 children. UGCC religious orders – whose convents and monasteries have been turned into refugee shelters – received training on how to undertake new ministries while remaining aligned with their community's original vocation.
In Poland, which has welcomed some 2 million Ukrainian refugees, the collection has helped the UGCC's Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish in Lublin to establish a welcoming ministry, where refugees ages 11-18 can pray, receive trauma counseling and participate in sports, music and other activities to heal and build community.
Bishop Vincke noted in his reflection that Lublin was "where the future Pope John Paul II taught for decades, developing deep affection for Eastern Catholics," along with "a tremendous concern for refugees," with whom he had worked as a young priest following the Second World War.
"We can be sure he is praying for this ministry," said Bishop Vincke.
Another beneficiary of the collection is the Catholic University of Croatia, which has gathered students from Ukraine and from Catholic universities throughout central and eastern Europe through its "Practicing Resilience-Preparing for Recovery" program. The summer courses feature lectures by recovering war survivors as well as research on breaking the cycle of vengeance.
The collection has also enabled Serbian Catholics to renovate the parish house of Belgrade's Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. While the cathedral has been restored after the Serbian government returned it to the Catholic Church in 1988, the parish house had remained in disrepair. The new facility now includes energy-efficient utilities, facilities for faith formation and parish events, a kindergarten, a guest house for pilgrims and six apartments for elderly and ailing priests.
Bishop Vincke said that collection donors are "sponsoring inspirational ministry" in "overwhelmingly Muslim Tajikistan" (regarded as the poorest of the former Soviet states), where a small Catholic community survived Soviet-era deportations. Currently, Incarnate Word priests and religious sisters from the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará community operate a school for impoverished children of all backgrounds, and the "tiny Catholic community" has seen three vocations – two Tajik priests and one Tajik religious sister.
"Just as the first apostles sought support to reach people who had never heard the Gospel, the U.S. bishops are asking you to support ministry in places where the Catholic faith is little known, and the Church has strong faith but few material resources," said Bishop Vincke. "When Catholics give together, even the smallest offering is multiplied, much like the loaves and fishes that Jesus blessed."
