A collection of funds for Darfur (Sudan) and other African countries where children are suffering from famine will be held in all churches in Poland on Sunday 4 March. It is being promoted by the aid organization “Ad Gentes” run by the Polish Church. The chairman of the Commission for Missionary Works of the Polish episcopate, Bishop Wiktor Skworc, recalled that, as a result of the protracted conflict in Sudan, “over 400,000 people have died; 2 million people have been forced to abandon their own homes and seek refuge elsewhere; and hundreds of thousands of inhabitants who have remained in their destroyed villages or been re-settled in refugee camps are suffering and dying for lack of food and water”. In 2006 the collection of funds for missionaries, held in Poland on the second Sunday of Lent, raised almost 500,000 euros, devolved to the suffering populations of Africa, Latin America, Asia and Oceania. The humanitarian organization “Ad Gentes” of the Polish Church was founded in response to the appeal of Benedict XVI to Polish bishops during their “ad limina” visit to Rome in December 2005, in which he had asked them “to encourage” Polish priests “to undertake missionary service” and ensure them of “spiritual support and sufficient material aid”.
