‘Lenten fasting? Give savings to kids’

MANILA, Philippines - As Ash Wednesday approached, Filipinos were urged yesterday to give any money saved from Lenten fasting to help feed children in disaster-stricken areas.

Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle urged Filipino Catholics to donate the money from their Lenten fasting to the Fast2Feed fund-raising program, which aims to buy food for children living in areas hit by calamities.

Fast2Feed is a fund-raising campaign for Pondo ng Pinoy’s Hapag-Asa feeding program.

Donations will be used to feed children in Zamboanga City, which was razed in a siege last year, earthquake-hit Bohol and Cebu, and areas devastated by Super Typhoon Yolanda.

Tagle said the natural and man-made calamities that struck the country have brought about “widespread hunger and misery among the people,” a situation that calls for charitable acts.

“To live charitably means carrying the burdens of the weakest and poorest among us, to be in solidarity with them,” Tagle said, noting that the season of Lent is an opportune time to live charitably while abandoning sinful acts and habits.

The Hapag-Asa feeding program has fed more than one million hungry and undernourished children since it began in 2005. It feeds children six months to 12 years old once a day, five times a week for six months.

Pondo ng Pinoy provides food subsidy of P5 to P10 per day or P600 to P1,200 for six months per child.

Parents of children-beneficiaries of Hapag-Asa feeding program would also be provided with livelihood and skills training to give them access to employment and income-generating activities.

Tagle also called on the laity to offer prayers to those who suffered the wrath of recent calamities that struck the country.

“As we start our spiritual journey today…Let us also remember in our prayers our brothers and sisters who perished from the recent tragedies and let us continue giving help to those who lost their homes, livelihood and loved ones,” he said.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) also came up with a Lenten message for 2014 titled “Poverty That Dehumanizes, Poverty That Sanctifies.” It was signed by CBCP president Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas, who asked the Filipino faithful to live simple lives.

“Not all are called to choose a life of actual poverty. Many among the laity, the clergy and the religious do so admirably, whether as individuals or in a community, and as a result give a powerful witness to the Gospel,” he said.

“However, all are called to live lives that are marked by a consistent and liberating detachment from such worldly goods as material possessions, resources, power and social status – a detachment that allows us to be sensitive and to respond to those with less possessions, less resources, less power, lower status,” he added.