SPAIN
“Xtantos”: financial support to the Church Spain’s Bishops’ Conference launched a public-awareness campaign – ongoing until June – promoting the choice of devolving 0.7% of income surtax to the Catholic Church, as envisaged in the tax return statement. Spain’s Bishops’ Conference Secretariat for Support to the Church, which is coordinating the 2009 income campaign, released the news. Following the wake of the previous campaigns, the slogan “Xtantos” conveys the need for everyone to contribute to the Church’s efforts to help those in need. The contents of the campaign will be publicised on television and radio networks, with ads on daily newspapers and periodicals and will be posted on the internet and on billboards. 900,000 copies of a twenty-page handout, “Xtantos”, with news reports – interviews, comments, reportages – focusing on financial support to the Church, is being distributed in parishes across Spain. The campaign’s website (www.portantos.es) provides information regarding the campaign and first-hand accounts of people who devote their lives to cooperating with the Church or who have benefited from her help. Since 2008 support to Spain’s Church fully depends on this voluntary contribution. Devolving 0.7% of taxable income entails no additional cost to taxpayers. In 2008, 500 thousand more taxpayers opted for this choice, referred to 2007 income. A total of 6.958.012 taxpayers chose the Catholic Church as the recipient of the “asignación tributaria”, representing 34,38% of all taxpayers (compared to 33.45% registered the previous year). It is estimated that in Spring 2008 over 8,500,000 taxpayers chose to devolve their contribution to the Church. The Catholic Church thus received 241.3 million euro, compared to 173.9 million euro the previous year.The “campaign for the sick””Believing, celebrating and living the Eucharist” is the theme chosen by the Episcopal Commission for Health Pastoral Care of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference (CEE) for the 2009 Campaign for the Care of the Sick. Since 1985 Spain celebrates “Easter of sick people” on the fourth Easter Sunday, which in 2009 falls on May 17. The campaign has been ongoing since February 11, the World Day of the Sick, and will last until the Easter of the Sick celebrations. The campaign for the sick has several objectives: “to rediscover the gift of the Eucharist as the Christian source of light and strength when experiencing sickness, treatments, pain, suffering, death, and in conveying pastoral care to all of these spheres”; “studying the behaviours and commitments inspired by the Eucharist stemming from living and celebrated faith”; “helping the sick understand, celebrate, and live the Eucharist as a source of life, promoting the health-giving power of the Word”; “increasing the practice of anointing the infirm”; “ensuring that Christian communities devote greater attention to the sick and to those who suffer, acknowledging them as active members and promoting their participation in Sunday Eucharist”.The Jubilee of Santo Domingo de la CalzadaDomingo Garcia, a hermit monk born around the year 1010 in a small town in the district of Burgos, Spain, was raised to the altars of the greatest Saints in Spain in acknowledgment of his commitments for charity and social works taking the name of Santo Domingo de la Calzada. This year recurs the ninth centenary of his death, occurred in 1109 in the city that bears his same name in the Rioja region. A jubilee year has been called for the occasion. The opening ceremony for the jubilee held on May 1st in the Santo Domingo de la Calzada cathedral was presided over by Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, President of Spain’s Bishops’ Conference and archbishop of Madrid. During the opening ceremony Msgr. Juan José Omella, bishop of the diocese, read the decree of the Holy See establishing the jubilee year and the document of the Apostolic Penitentiary establishing the conditions for plenary indulgence during the jubilee year, due to close on May 12, 2010. Cardinal Rouco Varela underlined the spirit of service and charity of Santo Domingo, notably the foundation of the city, the erection of important works for pilgrims of the “Camino di Santiago di Compostela”, and charity in favour of the city’s inhabitants. This jubilee will coincide for a few months with next jubilee year of the Camino de Santiago, scheduled for 2010.
