USCCB - Catholic Home Missions

A nonprofit fundraiser supporting

Strengthening the Church at Home.

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Strengthening the Church at Home

The USCCB-Catholic Home Missions (CHM) program provides financial support to missionary activities that strengthen the Catholic Church in the United States and in its territories and former territories. Your donations primarily help support dioceses and Eastern Rite eparchies that are unable to offer their people the basic pastoral ministries of word, worship, and service without outside help. Funds also sometimes provide grants to other dioceses in the US for particular projects and to organizations and religious communities engaged in missionary work.

Donations fund a range of pastoral services, but most CHM grants support:

evangelization activities;
religious education;
ministry training for priests, deacons, religious sisters and brothers, and laypeople; and
aid to poor parishes across the country.

For example, the Diocese of Arecibo, situated on the central northern coast of the island of Puerto Rico, contains 16 municipalities on the coastal plain and in the mountainous region inland. Since Hurricane Maria struck the island in 2017, the diocese has been challenged with outward migration and decreased economic opportunity. However, with a Catholic population of more than 300,000 people and only 83 active priests to minister to them, the diocese needs more priests. In 2012 Arecibo’s Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres established the diocesan Seminary San Jose in Pamplona, Spain, to form all candidates to the priesthood. Here men discerning a priestly vocation receive formation in the intellectual, spiritual, and pastoral dimensions necessary for the priesthood. In 2015 the diocese also inaugurated a pre-seminary in Puerto Rico for young men to discern their vocations and prepare them for possible admission to Seminary San Jose. In the 2019-2020 academic year, the seminary had nine seminarians and ordained two transitional deacons to the priesthood.

See a map of Catholic Home Mission-funded dioceses and learn more by CLICKING HERE.

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