How to Cover the Catholic Church

How to Cover the Catholic Church

bles, to supply much-needed aid in those areas of Eastern Europe and the Middle

East where Christianity faced major challenges, and where the people of those

regions, whatever their faith, faced immense religious, political, social, economic,

educational, health and other challenges.

CNEWA’s basic mission is to work on behalf of the Christian East in those

lands in which, from ancient times, the majority of Christians are members of

the various Eastern churches. In its 80-year evolution, its mandate has grown

to encompass the churches and peoples of the Middle East, Northeast Africa,

India, and Eastern Europe, as well as Eastern Catholics throughout the world.

It assists projects and programs of pastoral support, humanitarian assistance,

interfaith communication and public awareness in all those areas.

In recent years leaders of the Catholic Church in Canada and in other

countries where the hierarchy has had special concerns about or programs

for the church and society in the Near East and Middle East have begun to

develop ways to coordinate their concerns and activities with CNEWA and the

Pontifical Mission for Palestine. As a result, a new national branch, CNEWA

Canada, has been formed, and bishops in Latin America, Australia, Austria,

Germany and Switzerland have begun to study the possibility of developing

other national or regional offices of CNEWA.

The archbishop of New York is ex officio president and director of

CNEWA. The secretary general and chief executive officer, nominated by the

New York archbishop and elected by its trustees, is Msgr. John E. Kozar. The

associate general secretary is Brother Gerard Conforti, F.S.C. The main phone

number is 212-826-1480. The Web site is

Pontifical Mission Societies

The Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples—which oversees

church activities in those parts of the world where the church is not yet suf-

ficiently established to support itself economically or in terms of priestly and

religious vocations and other organizational infrastructures—provides a net-

work of spiritual and financial support for the missions through its four pon-

tifical mission societies, which have national and diocesan branches around

the world.

The

Society for the Propagation of the Faith

is the largest of the four.

It provides support to mission dioceses in Africa, Asia, the Pacific islands

and remote areas of Latin America. The

Holy Childhood Association

seeks

to make children aware of the church’s missionary activities and help them

develop a missionary spirit themselves by contributing to programs directed