My dear friends,
Each year I come to you to ask your help to give generously to the various missions of our Diocese and help in my ministry to provide for the needs of the poor and the sick, our young people, our retired priests, and all the very charitable works that makes us who we are as the Catholic community of Fairfield County.
Each year you generously respond for which I am most grateful, but this year I come to you with particular joy because I am going to ask you once again to support those ministries and new initiatives that together are forming this one great invitation to renew the spiritual and pastoral life of our diocese.
Many of you have heard my presentation on “The One”; the one invitation, the one adventure, the one priority we all share to invite every believer to deepen their personal relationship with the Lord and to encounter His love, mercy, forgiveness, charity, and His joy, and to accompany one another individually and in small communities of faith.
We have perennially done much of that through the Bishop’s Appeal with opportunities to learn the faith for our young people and our children, to consider the works of beauty as a way to encounter Christ through the Sacred Heart Guild, to protect human life in all its stages and many other activities. We have been dedicated to this work, but now we have the opportunity to bring it to the next level and move forward.
I am deeply encouraged, excited and motivated to ask for your help so that this vision, which we all long for, will become ever more of a reality in our midst. That is why I come to you this year to ask for your help, to give sacrificially and generously so that our works of charity, our aid to the poor, our educational efforts and all initiatives will create that one great opportunity to show the world and one another who we truly are in Jesus Christ.
Together, will have a springtime of renewal in our midst, so that those who share faith with us and the generations to come will look back at this moment, this opportunity and say they have done their work well.
My friends please give generously to the Annual Bishop’s Appeal, and may God bless you and your families.
Most Reverend Frank J. Caggiano
Bishop of Bridgeport
