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How to Cover the Catholic Church
bles, to supply much-needed aid in those areas of Eastern Europe and the Middle
East where Christianity faced major challenges, and where the people of those
regions, whatever their faith, faced immense religious, political, social, economic,
educational, health and other challenges.
CNEWA’s basic mission is to work on behalf of the Christian East in those
lands in which, from ancient times, the majority of Christians are members of
the various Eastern churches. In its 80-year evolution, its mandate has grown
to encompass the churches and peoples of the Middle East, Northeast Africa,
India, and Eastern Europe, as well as Eastern Catholics throughout the world.
It assists projects and programs of pastoral support, humanitarian assistance,
interfaith communication and public awareness in all those areas.
In recent years leaders of the Catholic Church in Canada and in other
countries where the hierarchy has had special concerns about or programs
for the church and society in the Near East and Middle East have begun to
develop ways to coordinate their concerns and activities with CNEWA and the
Pontifical Mission for Palestine. As a result, a new national branch, CNEWA
Canada, has been formed, and bishops in Latin America, Australia, Austria,
Germany and Switzerland have begun to study the possibility of developing
other national or regional offices of CNEWA.
The archbishop of New York is ex officio president and director of
CNEWA. The secretary general and chief executive officer, nominated by the
New York archbishop and elected by its trustees, is Msgr. John E. Kozar. The
associate general secretary is Brother Gerard Conforti, F.S.C. The main phone
number is 212-826-1480. The Web site is
www.cnewa.org .Pontifical Mission Societies
The Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples—which oversees
church activities in those parts of the world where the church is not yet suf-
ficiently established to support itself economically or in terms of priestly and
religious vocations and other organizational infrastructures—provides a net-
work of spiritual and financial support for the missions through its four pon-
tifical mission societies, which have national and diocesan branches around
the world.
The
Society for the Propagation of the Faith
is the largest of the four.
It provides support to mission dioceses in Africa, Asia, the Pacific islands
and remote areas of Latin America. The
Holy Childhood Association
seeks
to make children aware of the church’s missionary activities and help them
develop a missionary spirit themselves by contributing to programs directed