The Shepherd, July 2004
POINTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE
USUALLY in the section we copy a question posed by one of our correspondents and give our reply to it. In this issue, we are simply quoting a letter from a correspondent in Italy, who kindly sent a donation to our building fund. She tells of church fund-raising at the church she attends and the zeal for attending church that she has witnessed among the Romanian community in Italy - a zeal which we would do well to emulate. She writes:
“I hope you will be able to start building without raising all the money first. At the Romanian church I attend in Verona - and presumably at the other 40 or so churches they have in Italy - monks from Romania often stand outside with a collecting box for their monasteries. It is a great pleasure to be able to give directly in this way, to help others, even though we are a missionary church too.
“Recently, however, a priest who had collected for his very poor parish was beaten and robbed by thieves on his way home. He appeared the next week with black eyes, a battered face and hardly able to walk. I didn’t get the full story but as he was still here the robbery must have happened in Italy.
“The congregation is made up of young people, for the most part, looking for work or in humble jobs such as cleaning. Yet they spend a good four hours in church on Sundays and there have been 300 baptisms this year. Yet this is a small parish compared with others, I have been told, so I suppose the Romanians will have an influence on Italy in the future.”
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