![]() ![]() President Gerald Ford spoke, calling the Catholic Church “the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideals,” although a New York priest anonymously told The New York Times that Mr. The Eucharistic Congress was a real who’s who of 1970s Catholicism: Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Dorothy Day both spoke at a conference on women and the Eucharist just two years before being elected Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow gave the homily at the Mass for Freedom and Justice, held in Veterans Stadium even U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as a national program, and in 1977, the bishops voted to make it the official program of C.R.S. ![]() There, Operation Rice Bowl was adopted by the U.S. So when the 41st International Eucharistic Congress was held in nearby Philadelphia in 1976, and its theme was “The Eucharist and the Hungers of the Human Family,” it was a perfect fit for the burgeoning program from Allenstown. By the next year, it had expanded to dioceses across the United States and Canada and raised over $5,000,000. Pittsburgh Catholic reported that in its first year, Operation Rice Bowl raised over $100,000 for international relief agencies. ![]() Nearly 700 Protestants, Catholics and Jews attended the event. From there, they devised Operation Rice Bowl.Īccording to Allentown’s local paper, The Morning Call, Operation Rice Bowl began as an ecumenical Lenten sacrifice program and was introduced in an interfaith service at Allentown’s First Presbyterian Church in January 1975. In the early 1970s, as a global famine left much of the world hungry, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant leaders gathered in Allentown, Pa., to discuss ways to respond to the ongoing drought and famine in Africa’s Sahel region that made headlines around the world. Rice Bowl effort, the flagship program of the relief agency: The Lenten pillars of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving should call us to solidarity and charitable action for the poorest among us. Findlay says that Lenten fasting can help Catholics be mindful of the fact that “some people are hungry, and it’s not a choice, and they’re not fasting on purpose.” And, from that spark of solidarity, we can take action, offering our prayers-and our money-to those who go without. Enough food is produced today to feed everyone on the planet, but still, 821 million people around the world are “chronically undernourished.” Hunger is not a problem of scarcity but distribution. They are pertinent since one-third of the global food supply is wasted each year, according to the United Nations. “Do we need as much as we have? How much do we hold on to?”ĭesiré Findlay, a trainer and facilitator at Catholic Relief Services, raised these questions in a phone interview with America on the Lenten call to fasting. ![]()
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