ROME (CNS): The Italian Bishops’ Conference has disbursed another €10 million ($86.9 million) to the dioceses in northern Italy hardest hit by the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic.
The money will be used for emergency aid to individuals and families struggling financially, to support organizations and institutions that are working to combat the pandemic and its effects, and to help parishes and other Church entities in difficulty, a statement from the bishops’ conference said.
The statement said the funds were distributed in early June and must be used by the end of the year. A detailed report on how the finances were spent must be submitted to the bishops’ conference by 28 February 2021.
The additional distribution of funds to dioceses in what the Italian government had defined as “red or orange zones” for their high numbers of Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths brought the total emergency aid provided by the bishops’ conference to almost $2 billion.
The money comes from an emergency fund established using part of the proceeds the bishops’ conference collects each year from citizens’ tax designations. When paying their income tax, people can designate that 0.8 per cent go to a government social-assistance programme, to the Catholic Church or to one of 10 other religious organisations.
While more than half of Italian taxpayers make no choice, of those who do, close to 80 per cent choose the Catholic Church. For 2019, the bishops’ conference received more than 1.13 billion euros ($11.2 billion) from the tax scheme. The money is used to pay the stipends of priests and salaries of other pastoral workers, support charity projects in Italy and around the world, to run seminaries and schools, and to build new churches.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the Italian Bishops’ Conference distributed €200 million (about $1.7 billion) in emergency aid with most going to the country’s 226 dioceses.
The conference also gave more than US$562,000 ($4.3 million) to the national foodbank foundation, more than US$10 million ($77 million) to Catholic hospitals and schools in the world’s poorest countries and more than US$9.4 million ($72.8 million) to 12 Italian hospitals that were handling the most Covid-19 patients.
