Does your parish help run a food pantry or have an emergency services program? Perhaps your parish or ministry provides food assistance for children during summer months, offers meals for those who are homeless, or sponsors a community garden that provides fresh produce to those in need.
If so, consider applying for a Catholic Charities CRS Rice Bowl Mini-Grant for up to $1,000 in grant funds.
Catholic Charities is now accepting applications for CRS Rice Bowl Mini-Grants. For every $3 of CRS Rice Bowl funds sent to CRS for overseas projects, $1 remains in the Diocese of Charlotte to help fund a local grant program that supports poverty and hunger fighting projects of diocesan Catholic entities.
Projects must target hunger and poverty in communities in the Diocese of Charlotte.
Only one grant can be submitted per Catholic entity and grant applications must be reviewed and signed by the pastor of the parish, principal of the school, or director of the diocesan office applying for the grant.
Completed and signed applications are due, in scanned PDF, by the email deadline of Monday, Oct. 17.
Applications, including guidelines and eligibility criteria, are available at www.ccdoc.org/cchdcrs.
— Joseph Purello
CHARLOTTE — St. Thomas Aquinas Parish will have four events in September, and all are welcome to attend:
- Elisa Torres-Neff: “The Catholic Church and the Crisis of Meaning,” 11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 10, in Aquinas Hall. Torres-Neff is a visiting instructor for the Honors College at Belmont Abbey College, where she aims to cultivate the moral, spiritual and intellectual virtue of young people. In this public lecture, she will explore how the Church provides compelling answers to the fundamental questions about life and a viable solution to modernity’s crisis of “meaning.”
- St. Thomas Aquinas University-Area Farmer’s Market: In the courtyard of the church from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11.
- Shane Page: ”Crossing the Tiber,” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 12, in Aquinas Hall. Page, a Gastonia native and former Methodist pastor who now serves as evangelization director at St. Michael Parish, will talk about his conversion journey and coming home to the Catholic Church.
- Art and Laraine Bennett: “The Temperament God Gave You,” on Saturday, Sept. 24, after the 8:30 a.m. Mass in the church. Q&A to follow. Art Bennett is a licensed marriage and family therapist and former head of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Arlington, Va. This talk is based on some of the popular books that the Bennetts have co-writtten dealing with the four temperaments, marriage and family.
— Tim Flynn