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SEPTEMBER 2 2011 THE CATHOLIC HERALD

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Cardinal condemns threat to Confession

BY ED WEST

CARDINAL Seán Brady has condemned the Irish government’s attempts to intrude on the “sacred and treasured” sacrament of Confession.

Speaking for the first time on the issue last Sunday, during his homily to worshippers at Knock shrine in County Mayo, the Archbishop of Armagh said: “Freedom to participate in worship and to enjoy the long-established rites of the Church is so fundamental that any intrusion upon it is a challenge to the very basis of a free society.

“The sacramental seal is inviolable. Thus it is absolutely illegitimate for the confessor to make the penitent known, even only in part, using words or any other means, and for any reason.”

The cardinal was speaking during a Mass to conclude the centenary year of the birth of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

He said: “For example, the inviolability of the seal of Confession is so fundamental to the very nature of the sacrament that any proposal which undermines that inviolability is a challenge to the rights of every Catholic to freedom of religion and conscience.”

The cardinal was speaking in response to Irish government proposals for child protection measures under legislation being drawn up to deal with child abuse.

Among the controversial measures, a priest could be convicted of a criminal offence if he was told of a sexual abuse case in the confessional and failed to report it to the civil authorities. Anyone who failed to declare information about the abuse of a child could face a prison term of five years.

The proposals come in response to the Cloyne Report, published last month, which found that the diocese in southern Ireland failed to report all complaints of abuse to police, that two thirds of abuse allegations made between 1996 and 2009 were not passed on to the civil authorities, as required by Church guidelines, and that retired Bishop John Magee had misled former inquiries.

The inquiry into the Cloyne diocese was set up by the government in January 2009 following a report published the previous month. It was conducted by the National Board for Safeguarding Children, a body set up by the Church to oversee child protection policies. It found child protection prac

Cardinal Brady has insisted that the sacramental seal of Confession is inviolable PA Photo tices in the diocese were “inadequate and in some respects dangerous”.

In response to Cardinal Brady’s comments Justice Minister Alan Shatter said that forthcoming child protection measures, including mandatory reporting, will “apply regardless of any internal rules of any religious grouping”.

In a statement, a spokesman for Mr Shatter said: “It is the failure in the past to make such reports that has led sexual predators into believing that they have impunity and facilitated paedophiles preying on children and destroying their lives.”

The Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald said that priests who are given admissions of child abuse during confession will not be exempt from new rules on mandatory reporting.

In July, in an exceptional move, the Vatican recalled its nuncio to Ireland in order to arrange a formal response to the Cloyne Report. A spokesman for the Vatican said that recalling the nuncio “denotes the seriousness of the situation, the desire of the Holy See to face it with objectivity and determination, as well as a certain note of surprise and disappointment over some excessive reactions” to the report and its accusations against the Vatican.

The move was made after Irish prime minister Enda

Kenny told parliament that the Cloyne Report “exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago”.

Meanwhile, one priest in Derry has already said he would rather go to jail than break canon law which states it is “absolutely illegitimate for the confessor to make the penitent known” for any reason. Fr Paddy O’Kane from the Holy Family parish in Derry’s Ballymagroarty estate, said: “I would certainly be prepared to go to jail over this. I don’t think it would come to that but I would go to jail,” said the Donegal native.

“In a criminal matter, a priest may encourage a penitent to surrender to authorities voluntarily. However, this is the most a priest can do. We cannot directly or indirectly disclose the crime to anyone.

“It goes without question that children must be safeguarded at all costs but this very specific priest-penitent privilege is usually respected in law and without it a priest’s capacity to fulfil his ministry is inhibited.”

Gerry Whyte, professor at the Trinity College Dublin law school, has argued that the seal of Confession is protected by the Irish constitution and that the government’s proposal may be unconstitutional.

BISHOP Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth received the Sacrament of the Sick from Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark during a pilgrimage last week.

The bishop, who is suffering from bowel cancer, received the sacrament publicly at the Mass of the Anointing, 43 years after he visited the shrine, finding himself “enfolded and cherished with so many others who were receiving the sacrament”.

Bishop moved by final pilgrimage to Lourdes BY ED WEST

Bishop Hollis, who first went on pilgrimage in 1968 when he was chaplain at Oxford University, and who has gone with Clifton and later Portsmouth dioceses since 1981, gave a personal reflection on what “is almost certainly my last pilgrimage”.

He said: “For the first time in 45 years, I was one of the sick of the pilgrimage. Although I seemed quite well, I was aware of my energy levels diminishing and of my increasing dependence on the love and care of others.

“For the first time – and I have really had to struggle in prayer with this – I was bringing a gift from the Lord which was not of my choosing. I was bringing the gift of my cancer and I think that I have really been graced in these days to see that it is a gift and not a burden. Like all the gifts that come from God, it is not always easy to see where they are leading.

“All I can say – and it’s early days yet – I feel that I am being led into a new vision and way of life brought about by retirement and serious illness. I do not know where it will take me but I have been graced enough so far to be able to discern the hand of God in all this and a new phase of my life beckons me forward. For once, God is doing all the choosing and I am finding myself content for that to be so.

“I don’t know where I will be this time next year – Mells, (Somerset) I hope – or how I will be but I find myself very peaceful about all that may transpire.

“So, even after 43 years of pilgrimages to Lourdes, this one was new and with renewed faith I can hear afresh what Our Lady says: ‘Do whatever he tells you’. All I can say is ‘Amen’ to that. Thank you all so much for all your love, your prayers and your care which have enabled me to be where I am and have given me such strength and hope as I have.”

Bishop Hollis has travelled each year with the Catholic Association Pilgrimage to Lourdes and is a patron of the

Catholic Association Hospitalité.

The bishop has an appointment to see his consultant on September 12 when he will receive more news about his health. He attended the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth where he was told he had a malignant tumour in the lower bowel. He will undergo surgery this month, but he said in a message to his diocese last week that the cancer has not spread so far. “The surgery will be relatively straightforward.”

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS SATURDAY 17 SEPTEMBER LAUNCH OF THE BLESSED JOHN HENRY NEWMAN INSTITUTE OF LITURGICAL MUSIC 9.30am Registration and inaugural address by Fr Guy Nicholls, Director of the Institute 11am Sung Pilgrim Mass. Celebrant & Preacher: Rt Rev. Bernard Longley, Archbishop of Birmingham For further information: please phone 0121 454 0808 or visit www.oratorymusic.org.uk FEAST OF BLESSED JOHN HENRY NEWMAN TRANSFERRED TO SATURDAY, 8TH OCTOBER

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Diocese mourns priest who died of cancer at 51 Number of pupils studying RE rises by almost a fifth

BY ED WEST

THE BISHOP of Shrewsbury has paid tribute to Fr Christopher Jenkins, the Cheshire priest who died last week aged 51.

Fr Jenkins died of acute leukaemia in Christie’s Hospital, Manchester, surrounded by close family and friends, having received the sacraments just hours earlier.

Bishop Mark Davies said: “Fr Chris Jenkins had served in so many capacities during his priestly life which had taken him to different parts of the country as a Sacred Heart Father and into so many different fields of work.

“Like every priest his life had been an influence on a countless number of people but the most surprising and unexpected (not least to Fr Chris himself) was the service of his final months.

“Everyone who spent time with him came away touched by his courage and cheerfulness in the face of rapidly diminishing health. Fr Chris’s own perspectives on his last illness were shaped by a final pilgrimage to the Holy Land which caused him to speak amid the uncertainties of his treatment of entering the Garden of Gethsemane and sharing Christ’s prayer, “not my will, but yours be done...” and in his final days simply holding in his hospital room a cross carved in olive wood.

“We pray very much that with his pilgrimage on this earth completed he may at last be welcomed into the heavenly Jerusalem.”

Born in Altrincham in 1960, Christopher Jenkins was educated at Xaverian College in Manchester and studied at Mater Dei Institute, Dublin, Ushaw College, Durham and Durham University. He was ordained a Sacred Heart Father at St Joseph’s church, Stockport, in 1987 and also served at St John Ogilvie church, Irvine, Ayrshire, followed by 10 years in Dehon House in Ellesmere Port, a residential centre that was closed in 2003. During his last two years there he was the episcopal vicar for religious for the Diocese of Shrewsbury.

After further studies at the Institute of St Anselm in Margate, Kent, he went to Malpas, cheshire, as superior and Director of the retreat centre and was also a provincial councillor, mission secretary and vocations promoter.

In 2005 he spent a year completing his PhD at Manchester University on the relationship between psychotherapy and spirituality. He was incardinated into the Diocese of Shrewsbury earlier this year.

His funeral was due to be held in the Church of Our Lady and the Apostles, Shaw Heath, Stockport, yesterday afternoon, following a prayer vigil the previous evening.

BY MARK GREAVES

THE NUMBER of pupils taking a GCSE in Religious Education rose by almost a fifth this year, according to new figures.

But the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales (CESEW) said that interest was likely to drop because of the subject’s exclusion from the English Baccalaureate, a school leaving certificate.

Dominican Fr Tim Gardner, RE adviser for the CESEW, said he was pleased to see the number of students taking RE GCSE increase by 18 per cent.

He said: “These students chose to study RE GCSE before the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) was introduced and there is a danger that this year will mark the peak of its popularity as a result of its exclusion from the EBacc.”

To gain the EBacc pupils must achieve A* to C in English, maths, science, a language and a humanities subject – either history or geography, but not RE. The certificate is meant to shore up traditional academic subjects and is influential because it will be used to rank schools.

Fr Gardner said: “RE is popular among students, teachers and parents. It seems it is only unpopular with the Government. We will continue our engagement with the Government, Parliament and wider society on the issue of RE’s continued exclusion from the EBacc, to ensure that

RE remains a rigorous, popular option for students.”

The Government pushed ahead with its downgrading of RE earlier this summer despite pressure from MPs, head teachers and Catholic and Anglican bishops.

Roisin Maguire, head teacher at St Joseph’s College, Stoke on Trent, said the decision would “seriously disadvantage” Catholic schools.

She said the EBacc would penalise Catholic schools because, unlike secular schools, they offered RE as a compulsory GCSE subject.

Mrs Maguire explained that last year over 90 per cent of pupils at St Joseph’s gained at least C grades in key GCSEs, but that dropped to about 50 per cent if RE was not included. “Other Catholic schools are likely to suffer a similar distortion of their performance,” she said.

ACommons select committee made the same point in a damning report last month, explaining that faith schools may be “indirectly discriminated against” because of the exclusion of RE.

The CESEW has said it is “very disappointed” by the subject’s exclusion. The bishops described it as “unwise”.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “Success in RE GCSE continues to be recognised in the annual GCSE tables, as well as being a valuable qualification in its own right.”

NEWSBULLETIN Maynooth welcomes new intake of 22 seminarians TWENTY-TWO young men from 14 dioceses have begun their training for the priesthood in Ireland this week. Eighteen seminarians will begin their academic formation at Maynooth University and the remaining will study at St Malachy’s College, Belfast.

Mgr Hugh Connolly, the president of Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth,

welcomed the students. He said: “This is always an exciting time for the seminary... once again you come from a wide range of backgrounds, previous experiences, and the four corners of the country, but with one common factor – you are responding to an invitation given in and through faith to become priests who will spread the Gospel.”

Irish migrants returning to Britain BRITAIN’S Irish Chaplaincy has spoken of increased pressures on its services and those of other Irish charities in the coming years following research which has shown a massive increase in the number of Irish people emigrating to Britain in the past two years, according to Independent Catholic News.

It recorded a 23 per cent increase in the number of vulnerable Irish people using its services between 2009 and last year, and expects a similar rise for 2011.

The increase in service users across the chaplaincy’s three projects, working with older people, Travellers and prisoners, is mirrored in the wider society with more than 14,000 Irish people registering for national insurance numbers in Britain in 2010, an increase of 20 per cent on the previous year. It is estimated that one third of those who have emigrated from Ireland in the past two years have come to Britain.

Study criticises cohabitation COUPLES who live together before they marry are “significantly” more likely to divorce, according to a report by a Christian thinktank.

The report, issued by the Jubilee Centre, said living together had become “a more fragile state of relationship than ever before”. It found that couples who cohabited before marriage were 45 per cent more likely to end up divorced than those who waited.

Bishop stands with Travellers BISHOP Thomas McMahon of Brentwood has criticised the closure of Britain’s largest Irish Traveller camp.

He visited Dale Farm near Basildon, Essex, before eviction was due to begin on Wednesday.

Basildon Council and the Department for Communities and Local Government insist the evictions are legal but are seeking a peaceful resolution.

Liverpool bishop blesses hospice AUXILIARY Bishop Tom Williams of Liverpool has blessed and dedicated a new building called St Francis House at St Joseph’s Hospice in Merseyside following an appeal for more than £1 million last year.

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Pro-life group alarmed by Government proposal BY MADELEINE TEAHAN

A LEADING pro-life pressure group has voiced alarm at Government proposals that claim to ensure more independent counselling for women considering an abortion.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) expressed scepticism about proposals by the Department of Health which would place an obligation on abortion providers to offer women counselling by groups which do not carry out abortions.

SPUC has described the presentation of the development as a victory as “dangerously misleading” due to the “close commercial relationship” between the Department of Health and abortion providers.

Paul Tully, SPUC’s general secretary, said: “Handing the drafting of proposals relating to abortion to the Department of Health is like putting the fox in charge of the chicken-coop.

“The Department of Health commissions the vast majority of abortions in Britain, and says doctors should provide abortion on demand. Successive governments have regarded abortion as an answer to unmarried teenagers and other vulnerable women who get pregnant.

“Since 2004, most NHS abortions have been transferred to private clinics, and the health department now funds more than nine out of 10 abortions at these clinics. If the department now wants counsellors to help pregnant women avoid abortions, it would represent a major change of heart. We remain very wary of the proposals and the department’s involvement.”

The announcement follows the tabling of an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill, which would prevent abortion providers from offering crisis pregnancy counselling. Bedfordshire MP Nadine Dorries, who has also championed abstinence education in schools, is the main architect of the contentious amendment. Writing for the Guardian online she said: “The only place a woman can receive pre- or post-abortion counselling paid for by the state is from an abortion provider who has a clear financial interest in the ultimate decision the woman makes. Often women have to return to the abortion clinic where the procedure took place to receive their distress counselling. What caring person can believe that to be right?”

Mrs Dorries has insisted she will push ahead with her amendment and has refused to be “bought off” by the promise of a Government consultation. The Department for

Health is expected to implement their proposed reforms irrespective of the success of Mrs Dorries’s amendment.

But SPUC points out that the department is expected to dictate who would qualify as a pregnancy counsellor and what expectant mothers must be told.

Mrs Dorries has also made clear that, just as abortion providers should be ruled out of independent counselling services for pregnant women, so should pro-life counsellors under her proposed system.

Niall Gooch, a spokesman for the pregnancy counselling charity Life, said: “We would be opposed to any attempt to restrict our services on the grounds that they are not independent. We do believe that our service, like other non-profit crisis pregnancy centres, are genuinely independent and do offer a valuable service to women, not least because they are separated from the abortion clinic conveyorbelt ‘process’, which many women find impersonal and inadequate, and which women often describe as not offering real choice or the opportunity for long-term counselling and support.

“We have no financial incentive in the decisions made by our clients; we do not attempt to direct their decision-making.”

The proposals have been received positively among some pro-life groups, however. The All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, chaired by Labour MP Jim Dobbin, has broadly welcomed the Government’s announcement.

Ed Rennie, clerk to the group, said: “Although some of those involved in this initiative are not pro-life we obviously welcome anything that would remove preabortion counselling from the hands of abortion providers. For many years we have argued for the ending of the monetary gains made through the exploitation of vulnerable women by the abortion industry.” Editorial Comment: Page 13

Bishop tells youth: faith overcomes life’s storms

BY MADELEINE TEAHAN

BISHOP Mark Davies of Shrewsbury has encouraged young Catholics to pray before the Blessed Sacrament and remain faithful to the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI in order to discern God’s will for their lives.

Bishop Davies addressed at least 800 pilgrims at the Youth 2000 Festival, “Live at Walsingham”, when he invited them to anchor themselves securely in the truths of the Catholic faith and reception of the sacraments when trying to discern whether they had a vocation to marriage, the priesthood or consecrated life.

Throughout his homily, he referred to a storm at World Youth Day in Madrid on the night of the prayer vigil led by Pope Benedict. He commended the Pope’s courage in weathering the storm and continuing with Eucharistic Adoration once it had calmed.

Bishop Davies said: “As you consider your own call in the morning of your lives, how you are to give your life when there may seem many a storm around marriage and family, around priesthood and consecrated life, making such commitments seem to some around us almost impossible, then think on that parable of World Youth Day 2011, the lesson Pope Benedict asked us not to forget, of how we stand together with Peter’s Successor in the joy of our faith even when the wind is blowing, the rain pouring down because we fix our eyes on Jesus truly present with us in the Eucharist.”

“Yes, there will come moments when the brightness of a summer day may turn to sudden storms, when scandals come, when familiar patterns of parish life are shaken, when like the young prophet Jeremiah this morning you experience ‘insult, derision all the day long’, when like Simon Peter you are tempted to rebel against suffering at the hands of others, ‘Heaven, preserve you, Lord this must not happen to you’, when we find ourselves thinking no longer in God’s way but man’s.

“Then listen to Pope Benedict’s words in Madrid:‘The Church needs you, and you need the Church’. We need to stand together with the Church, to stand with Peter’s Successor, the Pope, and so through every storm when we are tempted like Jeremiah or Simon Peter to run from our difficulties, the threats and fears around us then to fix our eyes on Jesus.

“ ‘I now ask you,’ Pope Benedict wanted to say to the young that night in Madrid, ‘to abide in the adoration of Christ, truly present in the Eucharist. I ask you to enter into conversation with him, to bring before him your questions and to listen to his voice’.”

Pilgrims walk in procession at the Youth 2000 festival

Photo courtesy of Youth 2000

Equality quango snubs Catholic sacked by NHS BY SIMON CALDWELL

THE STATE equality watchdog is facing fresh accusations of discrimination against Christians after it refused to back a claim by a mental health worker that she was “bullied out a job” after showing prolife literature to a colleague.

Margaret Forrester is suing the NHS for unfair dismissal after she was sacked for gross professional misconduct.

She is also using equality and human rights laws on freedom of religion and free speech to sue the Central and North West London NHS Trust for “direct and indirect religious discrimination, direct and indirect belief and discrimination, and harassment on the basis of religion and belief”.

But her application for legal aid has been thrown out by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

monious, bigoted, hypocritical and anti-Christian organisation which regards the public money it has as a means to pursue its own prejudices”.

“The Commission has never backed a religious freedom or religious discrimination case financially,” said Mr Addison, the director of the Thomas More Legal Centre.

“That raises real questions about its impartiality and whether the Commission is itself acting in a discriminatory way,” he added.

The Commission, a quango which was set up in 2007 to oversee the implementation of equality laws, receives tens of millions of pounds of public funds every year.

Although it has never supported any of the numerous cases of harassment, discrimination, and sackings of Christians it has, however, funded cases against them.

The Commission argues that Miss Forrester, 40, of London, has no case because she was not required by the tenets of her Catholic faith to speak to work colleagues about the sanctity of human life.

It put its financial might, for instance, behind the successful legal action against Peter and Hazelmary Bull, Christian B&B owners who turned away a gay couple seeking a double room in their home.

“She may need to establish that it was a requirement of her faith that she should circulate material of the kind that she did in order to establish the particular disadvantage,” said Keith Ashcroft, a senior lawyer to the Commission.

“My view is that she will have great difficulty in doing so.”

But Neil Addison, the lawyer representing Miss Forrester, said the response confirmed his view that the Commission was a “sancti

Although it refuses to recognise the traditional belief of many Christians that human life is sacred from the moment of conception it has claimed that veganism is a belief that should be protected by law.

The decision by the Commission comes in spite of NHS lawyers conceding, in legal documents, that Miss Forrester’s convictions on the sanctity of human life constituted a “philosophical belief” protected by the Equality Act 2010.

Vaughan Parents’ Action Group

Our Patrons

Professor the Lord Alton, Professor Philip Booth, Professor David Crystal, Professor Felipe Fernandez -Armesto,

Patti Fordyce, Professor Luke Gormally, Michael Gormally, Lord Grantley, Paul Johnson, Sir Paul Kennedy QC, Edward Leigh MP, Lord Lexden, Colin Mawby, Charles Moore, Professor Judith Mossman, Cristina Odone, Professor Thomas Pink, Piers Paul Read, Dr John Martin Robinson, Dr Richard Shephard, Anthony Speaight QC, Sir Swinton Thomas QC, Dr Ralph Townsend, Professor Mark Watson-Gandy, Ann Widdecombe

AN HOUR OF PRAYER

for

THE CARDINAL VAUGHAN MEMORIAL SCHOOL

7 p.m. on Thursday 15th September

Westminster Cathedral Piazza

The Vaughan Parents’ Action Group invites parents, past pupils, friends and supporters to an hour of prayer and hymns and to help us to present our petition to Archbishop Vincent Nichols.

We petition His Grace:

• to nominate two current parents as Foundation Governors of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School; • to advise and encourage his nominees on the Governing Body to conduct the selection process of a new Head so as to bring about an appointment that will command the support not just of the Archbishop’s nominees but also of other sections across the unhappily divided Governing Body.

The Vaughan’s success has always depended on dedicated teachers supported wholeheartedly by Catholic parents. The hostile actions of the Westminster Diocese Education Service – in particular the imposition of its own Director, Paul Barber, on the Governing Body – threaten to undermine this harmonious and fruitful collaboration. Vaughan parents chose the School for its distinctive and unambiguously Catholic ethos. They want it to be cherished and protected. This is why they do not want a new Head to be selected while they are still under-represented on the Governing Body.

THE NEW HEAD WILL BE APPOINTED IN OCTOBER. This Hour of Prayer may be our last opportunity before then to show Archbishop

Nichols just how worried we are about the future of our wonderful School. Please see our website for further details or if you wish to sign our on line petition : www.savethevaughan.com

Government adviser calls for assisted suicide

BY MADELEINE TEAHAN

A GOVERNMENT adviser on dementia is facing severe criticism after he called for the legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Martin Green claimed that patients who were too frail to take their own lives were being robbed of “choice” and “autonomy” because assisted suicide is prohibited under British law.

Mr Green suggested that the issue should be settled by a referendum or a free vote in Parliament and urged Ministers to review the law.

Lord Alton of Liverpool has now written to Health Minister, Earl Howe, demanding clarification of Mr Green’s remarks in the Daily Telegraph.

“This newspaper statement by your department’s adviser on issues affecting the elderly ignores two House of Lords select committee inquiries into assisted dying, along with two free votes: presumably because they reached a conclusion with which he disagrees,” Lord Alton wrote.

“Would you please let me know whether Mr Green’s view represents the Government’s position and whether there are any departmental advisers who reflect Parliament’s view – one which is shared by the British Medical Association, the hospice movement, disability rights groups and most of the Royal

Colleges?” Lord Alton’s concerns were echoed by Lord Carlile of Berriew, chairman of the research think-tank Living and Dying Well, which opposes a change in the law.

He said: “Mr Green made his comments from a very privileged position: he is an adviser to the Government. Some may take him to have been speaking in that position. In effect he has called for the legalisation of both assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, subject to appropriate safeguards.

“He has offered no insight into what he regards as such safeguards, and has ignored repeated votes in the House of Lords reflecting the strongly held majority opinion that no remotely satisfactory safeguarding system has been produced by anybody, not even the former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, who is one of the foremost campaigners for a change in the law.”

The Society for the Protect ion of Unborn Children (SPUC) has called for the sacking of Mr Green.

SPUC’s general secretary Paul Tully said: “A man with these views has no place advising the Government on health policy, and is a disgrace to the English Community Care Association. Mr Green ...is clearly not interested in caring for some dementia sufferers.”

EAST AFRICA CRISIS

Ten million people are facing a devastating drought in East Africa. Very poor rains have led to crop failure, serious food and water shortages and the deaths of tens of thousands of animals in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan. With no rain expected until September, the situation can only get worse. The UN says that in some regions the drought is the worst in years. We urgently need your support to get life-saving aid to people now.

Please make a donation today. Your gift will help to provide life-saving food for the most vulnerable, as well as water-points, medicine and emergency support for families whose animals are dying.

Please give to the East Africa Crisis Appeal. Your help WILL reach people who need it most.

cafod.org.uk/eastafrica or call

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