“Everybody is quite concerned,” said Michael Casey, Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace executive director based in Montreal. “One, there’s the impact on our own organizations and then the impact on our partners.”

Some of the First World aid agencies are expecting donations to drop by as much as 15 per cent this year, he said. At the same time the financial crisis has thrown millions in poor countries back into poverty, putting new strains on CIDSE partner agencies.

“We anticipate that on an individual basis people might be reducing their contributions,” said Casey.

However, Development and Peace is in relatively good shape as it sizes up the market meltdown impact on contributions and expenses.

The Canadian agency has never developed substantial corporate or foundation support — the kinds of donations most likely to evaporate in a financial market crisis. Development and Peace still has two years of stable funding left on a five-year agreement with the Canadian International Development Agency, the federal government’s aid arm. The evidence from economic downturns in the early 1980s and early 1990s show that Development and Peace generally maintains its donor base through recessions. Its very conservative investments in guaranteed investment certificates and other bank instruments have done well even while stock markets plunged.

Having completed a restructuring less than three years ago, Development and Peace also has the advantage of lower, more manageable costs.

“We’re operating much leaner now in terms of all our resources,” Casey said.

The Share Lent campaign this year will continue to emphasize Development and Peace’s focus on Canadian mining companies abroad, but local parish groups will also have a message about how the financial crisis has touched Development and Peace’s partners in poor countries.

“Yes, we are suffering here in the northern countries. But the impact is greatly exacerbated in countries where people are poor,” Casey said. “If ever there was a time for solidarity, now is it.”

The real CIDSE focus isn’t on its own finances, but on how a future global financial system should serve the interests of everyone — rich and poor alike, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told the CIDSE directors.

“We should ask ourselves how we as Catholics can make sure the current crisis leads to systemic reform, taking into account the needs of the world’s poorest,” said the Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations in Geneva. “The danger exists that the G8 and the G20 become fora in which the crisis is discussed where the rich continue to dominate the negotiations and the needs of the poor are disregarded.”

Development and Peace’s Share Lent campaign aims to raise $10 million this year. Solidarity Day, when most Canadian dioceses designate that Sunday’s contributions for Development and Peace, is March 29. In Toronto Development and Peace gets a percentage of all ShareLife contributions to be determined by Toronto’s bishops.