The Tablet Staff

WINDSOR TERRACE — This Lenten season, parishioners can make a difference through two upcoming monetary collections that will assist people and places worldwide and here at home.

This year’s Catholic Relief Services Collection will support organizations that provide housing for victims of natural disasters, educational opportunities for refugees displaced by war, legal services for immigrants and asylum seekers, and ministries to maritime workers who have unique pastoral needs.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migrant and Refugee Services (MRS) particularly works to help refugee families through its Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Service (BRYCS) program. Through parishioners’ contributions to the collection, MRS has expanded BRYCS’s “Parenting in a New Country” program and resources into two additional languages — Swahili and French.

For more information about the Catholic Relief Services Collection, visit www.usccb.org/catholic-relief.

The Pontifical Good Friday Collection also returns this year to its usual date, having been postponed in 2019 due to the coronavirus pandemic. This collection is devoted not only to the preservation of the Holy Places of pilgrimage where Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again, but also to the welfare of our Christian brothers and sisters living there through pastoral, charitable, educational, and social works.

To date, this collection has supported 23 parishes and three academic institutions; offered 400 scholarships for high school and university education; helped keep schools open for over 10,000 pre-K through 12th-grade students; restored and maintained over 1,000 homes for Christian families; created 1,200 jobs for Christians, and preserved 65 shrines connected with the life of Jesus and the prophets.

Online donations for the Pontifical Good Friday Collection can be made at www.myfranciscan.org/good-friday.