The American Catholic Spirt

Dr. Tim Muldoon reflects on the response of the Catholic Church to recent natural disasters across the United States. The Church is the first place many go in the face of emergency, and Catholic Extension’s emergency $350,000 grant has helped dioceses in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Texas to provide necessities to those in need. Learn more here. 

Joe Boland, Catholic Extension's vice president for mission, recently appeared on Relevant Radio's Morning Air Show to discuss the needs of the Church and its people in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the wake of the devastating Hurricane Maria.

Click here to make a gift and help these communities to begin putting their lives back together. Thank you for your generosity and support!

Dr. Tim Muldoon, Catholic Extension's director of mission education reflects on his time visiting with members of the newly dedicated Blessed Father Stanley Rother Catholic Church mission in Decatur, Arkansas.

In very many cases, members of this church community were drawn to the United States to escape violence in places like El Salvador, Guatemala, or southern Mexico. The promise of work and a safe place to raise a family stands in stark difference to the reality from which many fled. For them, the fact that a man from the United States spent his priestly ministry in the kind of danger from which they themselves escaped is enough to persuade them of his heroic virtue. 

Read more and see photos: http://cathext.in/2fRWjye

We are proud to announce Father Enrique Herrera of Greenfield, California as the recipient of the 2017-2018 Lumen Christi Award. Now in its 40th year, this prestigious award celebrates Catholic heroes who are shining the light of Christ through their ministry to poor Catholic communities.

As pastor of a poor immigrant parish, Father Enrique has a dream that all the children in his community will one day attend college. Through early involvement in Bible studies and other programs, the kids receive a firm foundation in faith--usually remaining at the parish and taking on leadership roles in the youth programming after Confirmation. In this way, Father Enrique is building up a new generation of faithful, responsible leaders who are having a positive impact on their community.

Listen to this segment from Relevant Radio to hear vice president of mission Joe Boland discuss Father Enrique's transformative work.

Click here to watch a video of Father Enrique and learn more.

Catholic school leaders from the dioceses of Gallup, Juneau and Reno share their experiences participating in the Catholic School Leadership initiative sponsored by Catholic Extension and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The program allows them to further their own education while also forming a community with other teachers, principals and administrators who lead Catholic schools in some of the poorest, most remote areas of the United States. The program builds up these leaders to make an incredible impact on their schools and transform the lives of their students.

Learn more about the program.

Catholic Extension traveled to McAllen, Texas in the Diocese of Brownsville this week to present a $100,000 grant to the Humanitarian Respite Center, created to provide a way-station for asylum seekers from Central American countries.

For the past three years, the center has been generously housed in the parish hall of Sacred Heart Church in McAllen. With this grant, a new facility will be built to continue the work of the respite center, which has assisted more than 74,000 people since its creation in June 2014.

Listen to our vice president of mission Joe Boland discuss the work of the center and its inspirational leader Sister Norma Pimentel in this interview on Morning Air from Relevant Radio.

Click here to read more about the center and its important work and see photos from our visit.

We are proud to support lay leaders like Casey Bustamante, who works to enrich the faith lives of Catholics served by the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA. Listen to this podcast to learn more about her important ministry and consider making a gift to support the work of missionary disciples across the country: http://cathext.in/1nt3ZFC

Today our country is deeply fractured along political lines. In this episode, Father Jack Wall discusses how the Catholic Church has successfully brought together people of differing cultures and viewpoints to create a culture of encounter.

Hear about a diverse Catholic community in Georgia that recently came together to form a united parish and raised funds to build a new church with Catholic Extension support. Read more here.

You can join our mission to build churches and the Church in America's poorest places.

Meet some of the seminarians studying to be priests at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon. These missionary disciples are answering God's call to serve as priests in some of the poorest dioceses in the United States.

Learn more about our support of seminarian education. Each year, Catholic Extension supports more than 550 seminarians from an average of 47 mission dioceses around the country.

Click here to help us support the next generation of Catholic priests.

Have you ever thought about the labor behind the fresh fruit you buy all summer long at your local grocery store? If the fruit came from Washington, chances are that the person doing the picking was a fellow Catholic.

Joe Boland, Catholic Extension's vice president of mission, recently visited the Diocese of Yakima, Washington, where Catholic Extension has long supported the faith of migrant farm workers who provide seasonal labor picking cherries, pears and apples in this beautiful area of the United States.

Partnering with a Catholic Church in Chicago, we just created a new literacy wagon that will provide educational resources to the workers' children who are living in the migrant camps while their parents work throughout the summer. Listen to this episode to hear Joe discuss the new program on Relevant Radio and click here to read more about the Catholic faith in migrant worker camps in Washington.