Knights of Columbus members from four states and the District of Columbia gathered July 27 at the Knights of Columbus’s Sarto Hall in Forestville, Maryland to assemble food packages to be distributed to needy people in Maryland and Guatemala.
The event was sponsored by Cross Catholic Outreach, a service ministry that works with Catholic clergy, religious, lay people and organizations to provide food, water, housing, medical care and other relief to poor persons in more than 30 countries.
About 120 Knights from Washington D.C, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania packaged 36,000 meals to feed the hungry in Guatemala and an additional 4,000 meals for the hungry in Maryland.
“The Knights of Columbus especially are the hands and feet of Jesus right now in a hurting world. Having faith is one thing, but seeing them putting their faith in action is a beautiful thing,” said Sandi Pino, outreach senior director for Cross Catholic Outreach.
Pino said the food is resourced from an Outreach chapter in Iowa. For the Maryland give-away, the knights prepared packages of protein enriched macaroni and cheese that were distributed to the state’s hungry.
The packages sent to Guatemala included soy, rice, beans, dehydrated vegetables and vitamin packs. Pino said that country “is really experiencing a crisis in hunger and malnutrition.” The foods were shipped to Diocese of Suchitepéquez-Retalhuleu, where Pino said, “these people make maybe $2 a day in agriculture in rural Guatemala. They really have it bad.”
According to Cross Catholic Outreach, hunger is especially severe in Guatemala, where the rates of childhood malnourishment are among the highest in the world and nearly 60 percent of the population live below the poverty line.
“We try to send it to the places where there are the most important needs,” Pino said.
In addition to providing food, Pino said her outreach group also helps provide clean water, building homes and chapels and providing Catholic education.
“The faith aspect of this is ultra-important to this. We have Catholic partners around the world who live in communities with the poor and provide both material and spiritual relief,” she said.
Pino said that the current pandemic “has increased food insecurity and greatly impacted the vulnerable.” Cross Catholic Outreach coordinates food packing such as the one in Forestville with parishes, Catholic schools and Knights of Columbus around the country.
“In spite of this time of COVID, we have seen a tremendous outpouring of compassion and have seen an increase in material giving,” Pino said. “Catholics here (in the United States) are sacrificially giving to help their brothers and sisters whom they do not know, and that certainly is helping build up people of faith and faith communities across the globe.”
Pino called the food packaging at Sarto Hall an opportunity “to serve together in the spirit of Christ… The Knights’s motto of ‘Leave no neighbor behind’ is especially fitting for this event.”
