Diocesan Caritas agencies, the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) and the Prison Advice and Care Trust (Pact) were amongst the Catholic social outreach charities supporting people in need at Christmas.
In the run up to and over Christmas the main focus for Caritas Salford was support for children and families affecting by crisis and poverty and continued support for the homeless. As well as distributing presents to over 350 children in Greater Manchester and Lancashire, it received an increased number in crisis grant requests for families experiencing immediate need. Requests ranged from providing emergency support to paying for utility costs due to the death of a parent, to providing replacement household goods like cookers. “Rising household costs are hitting families on the lowest income and leaving them exposed and in crisis,” Patrick O’Dowd, director of Caritas Salford, told The Tablet.
“Our work to support the homeless continued throughout Christmas and the New Year, supported by Bishop John Arnold of Salford as he visited each of our projects,” he added.
Christmas Day outreach in Bury, supporting over 300 people who are either homeless or isolated, received special recognition with several Caritas Salford volunteers being interviewed live on BBC Radio Manchester throughout the morning, highlighting the importance of volunteers in the community. Longer term, Mr O’Dowd reported, “we remain concerned about impact of the Covid Omicron variant and its particular impact on mental health and that combined with rising prices of essential items and cuts to Universal Credit, 2022 will be a challenging year with more people pushed into the indignity of poverty.”
During December, the SVP Centre in Leeds collected food donations “to ensure we're able to provide food for those in need over the festive period”. Also, clothing for refugees and asylum seekers and toys for children in need. “We're overwhelmed by the donations pouring in on the run-up to Christmas,” the centre said on twitter.
The week before Christmas, the Mercy Hub – the outreach project of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle – took part in the ‘Love Christmas’ project, delivering 41 ‘bags of kindness’ to families across Newcastle, containing a Christmas card, decoration, chocolate bar and an Asda food voucher. Children were given a Christmas present. The Mercy Hub coordinator, Jeremy Cain, reported that “a Holiday Club was run in the first week of the school holidays, which provided activities for parents and children to do together – ice skating was the most popular – along with a hot meal.” On the final day, he added, “we took two socially-distanced coaches to visit the stunning outdoor light show at Gibside, our local National Trust property.” Mary’s Place, “our outreach to homeless people”, also provided food and Christmas gifts to 20 people.
Volunteers with Caritas Salford.
On Christmas Day in London, Farm Street Jesuit Church, the home of Central London Catholic Churches homeless services, hosted a lunch. “The atmosphere was festive and welcoming with volunteers also providing live music and carol singing after a sit-down Christmas lunch for 16 guests,” said Jen Copestake, Project Manager. “Some of our guests live outside the local area and rely on transport to come in,” she continued “and one walked for three hours to be with us on Christmas Day.” She told The Tablet that, “we are seeing rising numbers of guests, including people who are newly homeless, at our weekly lunch sit-down service, which operates on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and now we regularly have 31 guests for our sit-down lunch service on Wednesday, a big jump from even a few months ago.”
Fr Dominic Robinson, SJ, Parish Priest of Farm Street and Chair of Westminster Justice and Peace, commented that, “the rough sleeping situation on the streets of London this Christmas shows how this problem isn’t going away but is getting worse, but, thankfully, this is being matched by the incredible generosity of volunteers and donors who want to put faith into action.”
For the third year running, Caritas Westminster ran their Advent Giving Calendar initiative: a calendar giving suggestions for items for people to collect each day to donate to a local foodbank or food relief project in time for Christmas.
Many parishes and schools across the Diocese of Westminster responded to the call of Pope Francis ‘to look beyond ourselves…and open ourselves up’ to those in need over Advent. Some of the groups who took part donated the various items collected to their local foodbank, including students at Caritas St Joseph’s Pastoral Centre – a lifelong learning centre for adults with intellectual disabilities, which is part of Caritas Westminster.
Others used the calendar to support their own food relief work, including St Gregory’s Catholic Science College in Harrow, who used the calendar as a way to supplement the stores in their school run foodbank, which supports families within the school community. Additionally, some food relief projects chose to adapt the calendar to include specific items that their particular project needed, including the Hitchin Food Pantry, a new Caritas Westminster-supported community supermarket, which allows its members to do a weekly shop for their family, whilst keeping the bill at a fixed, affordable price.
Caritas Westminster organised Vinnie Packs during November and December, in partnership with the SVP, offering winter essentials such as gloves, hats and socks, which were handed out to people experiencing homelessness and struggling. Around 900 Vinnie packs were made by school children. In the words of one pupil, “when we helped pack the Vinnie Packs I felt like I was changing someone’s life; we knew these packs were small but they may have meant the world to one person.”
Just before Christmas, Andy Keen-Downs, director of Pact, which is supported by the Catholic community across England and Wales, wrote on twitter, “A BIG THANKYOU to the kind ‘elves’ who made it possible for mums and dads in prison to send gifts to their kids this Christmas.” Pact’s Operation Elf appeal called for doners to provide £10 gift cards which prisoners could then give to their children, and he reported that 1,300 prisoners’ children received a gift from their parent in prison thanks to “great teamwork from Santa”.
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