We are launching the Serra Foundation of Canada’s end-of-year appeal and we are asking for your help!
It has been a busy and productive year for the Foundation, and we are most appreciative of the participation of the Clubs and Club Membership in making a difference. The approach that Serra Foundation of Canada (SFC) takes is one of partnering with Serra members and our Foundation partners across Canada. With a collective focus on prayers, personal engagement and charitable giving to promote and support those pursuing the calling of God via the priesthood and consecrated religious life. The Foundation is a volunteer organization which ensures our overheads are low and that every Serra Member’s dollar donated makes it to the programs that promote the Serra mission. Further, as a charity we provide our Club Members with an appropriate charitable receipt and through donations from partner lay organizations can often provide up to $3 in grants for every dollar donated by our members during the Spring & Fall appeals.
We are grateful to all our Canadian Serrans for your generosity earlier this year in responding to the Foundation’s requests for charitable giving.
We are requesting so again, mindful of the many contributions the Foundation desires to make in order to help all 10 Seminaries across Canada, increase the Prayers for the Harvest, contribute to formation & youth programs, assist our vocations directors, support of the Catholic Missions in Canada and many other groups that work to promote and sustain vocations.
This Spring, SFC working in partnership with National Catholic Broadcasting Council (NCBC) and Serra membership across Canada were able to generate over 2.2 billion Prayers for Vocations during their annual Vocation Week Masses. We thank all Canadian Serrans for the thousands of intentions submitted for your local seminarians and priests, and hope for your ongoing support for next spring’s Vocation Week. Further we provide our Serra Members electronic mass card opportunities three times a year where Intentions for loved ones will receive on average over 100,000 prayers for each Mass card submitted. Finally, in recognition of his Eminence Cardinal Leo’s elevation to the College of Cardinals last December, we provided him with a Spiritual Bouquet of 120,000 prayers.
Also, you can help promote this appeal by displaying the appeal poster.
Please encourage each other to continue to pray and work for vocations and to consider a charitable contribution for their work of promoting vocations in areas where financial resources are required. Every Serran can help, according to their means! Everyone has a role to play!The Good Lord said: “The harvest is plentiful, the labourers are few!” This is Serra’s work – to be willing labourers for the harvest and, as in the parable of “The Widow’s Mite,” to donate generously from whatever harvest we ourselves have been fortunate enough to reap.
St. Junipero Serra, pray for us!
JP Savage
President
Serra Foundation of Canada