Summer Mission Appeal (Aug 16/17)

Updated 2025 Aug 16: for electronic giving, visit stmark.xyz/sma2025

The Most Rev. Bhagyaiah Chinnabathini, bishop of the Diocese of Guntur, India, will be joining us for Mass and making our Summer Mission Appeal. Below find an address from Fr. Joseph Madanu, Mission Director for the Diocese, in preparation for that weekend!

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Missionary Cause, Diocese of Guntur, India

Thanks Fr. David Hottinger, Fr. Patrick Evans and the parishioners for helping and supporting our missionary cause on the weekends of August 16-17. Your help and support towards our missionary cause will directly benefit the education of the poor children and the missions of our diocese. Please do consider helping us and praying for our missions.

The Diocese of Guntur is a mission diocese. It is located in the Southern part of India. At present there are about 529,770 Catholics in the Diocese over a population of 5 million. There are 103 parishes with nearly 500 mission stations. About 80% of the people in our diocese live in poverty. To help the children of these families (below the age of 14 years) we are running 61

Boarding Homes. About 2000 children are residing and studying in these boarding homes. Some of these children don’t have parents and some of them have lost one of their parents. Your help and support will go towards helping these poor children. The diocese provides support for these orphanages/boarding homes every year. Apart from the local support we receive every year we have to raise $200,000 through missions each year which would directly go in support

of providing education, food and boarding to the children living in our boarding homes.

Let me also bring to your attention that providing places of worship in some of our mission stations is also a big challenge for us at this time. In some of our mission parishes since we have no churches the priests of these parishes gather the people in different houses to celebrate the Eucharist. The Diocese has to build chapels and churches in a good number of these mission stations of our diocese. In some of the mission parishes we do not have rectories for the priests to stay. They are residing in rented apartments. It costs about $30,000 - $35,000 to build a chapel / rectory. At this time as a mission diocese we are in need of your generous love and support to continue the missionary work in our diocese. Your help would directly benefit the orphan children and the poor mission parishes of our mission diocese. Our beloved Bishop – Most Rev. Bhagyaiah Chinnabathini, himself, will be coming to your parishes on the weekend of August 16-17 to speak to you about our missions during all of the weekend masses. Please prayerfully consider our diocese and financially be generous in giving your support to the needy of our diocese. If you are writing a check please make a check payable to your parish and please write the memo as “Missions.” Thank you!

Yours in Christ Jesus our Lord

Fr. Joseph Madanu

Mission Director, Diocese of Guntur, India

frjosephguntur@gmail.com