Programs providing medical services to working, uninsured rural
residents in an impoverished area of the archdiocese and a witness to
life across the street from an abortion clinic are funded by new grants
from the 2018 Annual Catholic Appeal.
Health care and family
social services will be provided in rural Washington County through
Catholic Charities of St. Louis to augment the ministry of the Rural
Parish Workers of Christ the King. A medical clinic, staffed by a doctor
working with volunteers, will be piloted on Rural Parish Workers
property in Old Mines, and may set the stage for a Catholic mobile
health clinic to also bring health care and social services to uninsured
in and around nearby parishes.
The Rural Parish Workers, a group
of lay women bound by religious vows, serve about 2,500 people a year,
providing food, clothing, shelter and utility assistance.
Elsewhere,
the Franciscan Sisters of Charity have moved to the Our Lady of
Guadalupe Convent directly across the street from an abortion clinic in
St. Louis. They offer a ministry of hospitality and prayer as a witness
to life, love and mercy. The operational needs of this ministry of life
will be met with the help of the Annual Catholic Appeal.
Brian
Niebrugge, executive director of the Office of Stewardship and the
Annual Catholic Appeal, said the two programs reflect two legs of the
Church — prayer and action. “These two new efforts supported by the
Annual Catholic Appeal are very forward-looking and expand the mission
and ministry of the archdiocese,” Niebrugge said. as “they go to the
peripheries as Pope Francis tells us, to the places where people need
the help of the Church the most.”