This month, parishioners of the archdiocese will be able to "Share in the Care" for aging religious by contributing to the Retirement Fund for Religious collection benefiting elderly sisters, priests and brothers
Proceeds from the 19th annual collection Dec. 9-10 will be distributed to more than 500 religious orders in the U.S. facing serious shortfalls in projected retirement funding due to aging members' spiraling health care costs. Since the fund's inception in 1988, this appeal has raised almost $500 million in the U.S., including $746,121 raised in the Los Angeles Archdiocese last year.
"I'm particularly grateful for the generosity of donors in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles," said Sister of the Most Precious Blood Andree Fries, executive director of the National Religious Retirement Office in Washington, D.C. "Your donations ensure that religious who have served in your schools and other ministries are cared for."
Local religious institutes that received NRRO grants in 2005 included Benedictine Monks and Sisters, Carmelites, Claretian Missionaries, Daughters of Mary and Joseph, Franciscan Brothers, Immaculate Heart Community, Josephite Fathers, Lovers of the Holy Cross Los Angeles, Monastery of the Angels, Piarist Fathers, and Religious Sisters of Charity,
Other congregations receiving grants were Sisters of Bethany CVD, Sisters of the Guardian Angel, Sisters of the Holy Faith, Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, Sisters of Notre Dame, Sisters of St. Louis, Sisters of the Pious Schools, Sisters of Social Service, Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart, and Society of the Divine Word.
"The need is not declining, it's continuing to increase," said Ginny Cunningham, NRRO spokesperson. Though the annual collection was slated to end next year, the U.S. Catholic bishops overwhelmingly voted at their general meeting last summer to extend the appeal for retired religious until 2017.
According to Archbishop Jerome Hanus of Dubuque, Iowa, who introduced the extension proposal as chairman of the USCCB Committee on Consecrated Life, the Religious Retirement Fund collection "is the most successful national collection in the history of the church." The annual appeal has consistently received the best response of all the U.S. church's national collections, with donations from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles up 12 percent in 2005 from the previous year.
"We religious are profoundly grateful for the continued generous response of parishioners to this collection," said Notre Dame Sister Anncarla Costello, archdiocesan vicar for women religious. "It's a testimony of people's recognition of the gift of religious to their lives."
She estimates approximately one-third of the archdiocese's 1,800 religious women members of 120 congregations are over the age of 70. Nationally, the cost of living for the 37,000 women and men religious past age 70 totaled more than $925 million in 2005, say NRRO officials. Data submitted to NRRO by religious congregations shows that one out of every five institutes can pay less than 20 percent of projected costs.
"What's in the hearts and minds of major superiors is the challenge of caring for increasing numbers of aging members, especially those from outside the country. Social Security and Medicare are not necessarily available to some communities," said Sister Costello, who added that several local religious communities cannot afford health insurance.
Caring for aging religious in the past, she noted, was a little easier because local congregations had extra rooms to share. Now, she said, "our infirmaries/care centers are often full of our own members, which makes it very difficult to accept sisters from other congregations." |