COVID, plus civil war and years of crippling drought, have dimmed the prospects for democracy in Ethiopia, made the lives of hundreds of thousands of refugees more difficult, devastated the country’s basic social infrastructure of schools, hospitals, clinics and social services.

The $30 million Indigenous Reconciliation Fund has achieved its first-year goal of raising $9.4 million and the fund’s board has greenlit 17 projects.

Despite confronting formidable economic headwinds due to the highest inflation rates to hit Canada in 40 years, ShareLife’s parish fundraising campaign in 2022 came just shy of hitting its target.

Critics across the Church spectrum habitually accuse Canada’s Catholic leadership of ducking what “must” be done — must inevitably being defined by what a given critic wants.

A new, independent registered charity created to disburse $30 million Canadian Catholics will raise over the next five years is a chance to forge new relationships between the Church and Indigenous Canadians, according to Odawa/Ojibway elder Rosella Kinoshameg.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has formally established its new registered charity to support and advance healing and reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

Finalizing a “framework” for a five-year “campaign” to “fundraise” for a cause are hardly the whiz bang motivational words most of us need to roar out of the blocks for 2022. Set alongside, say, “sprinkling pixie dust to miraculously end the pandemic,” they might even appear a little, well, beige.

A national framework for a five-year, $30-million fundraising campaign in aid of healing and reconciliation with residential school survivors and their communities is coming in the new year, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops vice president Bishop William McGrattan has told The Catholic Register.

A national framework for a five-year, $30 million fundraising campaign in aid of healing and reconciliation with residential school survivors and their communities is coming in the new year, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops vice president William McGrattan has told The Catholic Register.

Regional efforts to raise $30 million on behalf of Indigenous healing and reconciliation projects appear to be on hold while the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops hammers out a national framework for regional and diocesan campaigns.

If Catholics really are going to raise $30 million to fund Indigenous-led reconciliation projects across the country, they’re going to have to run a very different campaign than the $25-million “best efforts” campaign that raised just $3.7 million between 2008 and 2014, say Catholic philanthropists and fundraisers.

The Catholic bishops of Canada have made a “financial pledge” with a “target of $30 million” over five years “as a tangible expression of their commitment to walk with the Indigenous Peoples of this land.” Local parishes will be “encouraged” to take up special collections “to support healing and reconciliation initiatives for residential school survivors, their families and their communities.”

VANCOUVER -- Hopes are high for a generous response to the B.C. Bishops’ Campaign in Support of Healing and Reconciliation this month.

To say this is a challenging summer for Catholics and their Church in Canada is putting it mildly. But where there is challenge, there is also opportunity and it’s vitally important that it is seized.

As Catholics across Canada scramble to make up for the failed “best efforts” fundraising campaign of 2007 to 2013, they’re now answering questions about their “in-kind” contributions to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement — a stream of compensation that Catholic residential school operators over-fulfilled by at least $5 million.