For over 150 years, the Diocese of Brooklyn has been synonymous with a community of prayer, faith, celebration and diversity. In fact, on any given Sunday, Mass is celebrated in 33 languages throughout Brooklyn and Queens. At the very center of our Diocese are our people, with many cultures and backgrounds, joined together in Christ in our parishes.

An aging infrastructure and personnel and an eye toward the future demand that the Diocese take certain financial measures into account and so it has announced that it will undergo a major capital campaign.

The three beneficiaries of the campaign will be the parish infrastructure, senior priests and young people. Entitled Generations of Faith, the project is named after the numerous generations of Catholics that have been raised and lived in the many tight-knit neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens.

Some churches, whose walls have listened to prayers of our ancestors through the Industrial Revolution, and the Great Depression and World Wars I and II, are in dire need of repairs.

Senior priests, who have served us so selflessly – taking part in generations of our family’s baptisms, communions and marriages and witnessing our joys, struggles and triumphs – look to us now to help them live out their golden years in dignity.

Finally, our children, the very future of the Catholic Church, depend on us to lead them and guide their spiritual and moral growth.

Through the leadership of Bishop DiMarzio, Msgr. Jamie Gigantiello and the 23 pastors in the pilot program, Generations of Faith promises to be a historic capital campaign. We have printed a four-page pullout in this week’s paper to provide you with additional campaign specifics and a breakdown of funding. We look forward to bringing updates and we urge our readers to be as generous as their means will allow.

The proceeds promise to usher in a new era of faith and abundance, that will benefit everyone in the Church in Brooklyn and Queens.

Generations of Faith builds upon the unprecedented generosity of the 1996 Alive in Hope campaign and the ongoing support of the Annual Catholic Appeal. The campaign will be conducted in all of the 186 parishes of Brooklyn and Queens, inviting the more than 1.5 million Catholics in the diocese to participate.