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ShareLife comes up $500,000 short

By 
  • August 25, 2009
{mosimage}TORONTO - Despite falling $500,000 shy of its goal during this year’s fund-raising campaign, ShareLife has pledged that charitable agencies will still receive the funding they need this year.

“The reality is we’re down (from last year), but given the economy and the way things are, we have still raised a significant amount of money,” said Arthur Peters, director of ShareLife, the charitable fund-raising arm of the archdiocese of Toronto.

The total campaign, through parishes, schools, individual donations and corporate donations, raised $13,726,863 — only $300,000 less than last year’s amount.

“We have still raised a substantial amount for the work of our agencies and for that we are thankful for everybody’s support,” Peters said.

ShareLife funds more than 40 agencies and organizations in the archdiocese of Toronto. In addition, funds are raised for humanitarian efforts. This past year an extra $230,366 was collected and provided to the archdiocese’s humanitarian relief partners.

With its parish campaign, Peters was relieved to see that 119 of the 224 parishes in the archdiocese surpassed what they had raised in previous years and 87 parishes achieved the suggested goals that ShareLife had proposed when the campaign began in March.

“Many of them were really happy about it,” Peters said. “

Parishioners responded positively, he added, despite the fact that the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, to which ShareLife annually gives more than $1 million, was accused in March by LifeSiteNews of funding pro-abortion groups in Mexico and other nations. In response to the controversy over what would be done with ShareLife funds, Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins announced in July that the ShareLife funds would be kept in reserve and given to Development and Peace for projects operated by organizations endorsed by local bishops. Any remaining amount of the $1,125,000 would go to the Pastoral Mission Fund. 

Peters was planning to meet with Development and Peace executive director Michael Casey to discuss how the fund allocation would work.

For more on ShareLife, visit www.sharelife.org .

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