Ash Wednesday collection ‘gives hope’ to reborn Church in Central, Eastern Europe

Ash Wednesday collection ‘gives hope’ to reborn Church in Central, Eastern Europe

Since 1991, the USCCB has held an annual Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe, with funds supporting the Catholic Church in the former Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Ash Wednesday collection to give hope

A woman is pictured in a file photo holding candles at a church in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. (OSV News photo/Oleg Popov, Reuters) In March 1991, a young Canadian-born Ukrainian Catholic priest named Father Kenneth Nowakowski boarded a chartered flight from Rome for a trip that would make headlines around the world – and history. The prelate for whom he worked, Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, was returning home for the first time since 1938, hav…