I’ve been asked to “step out of retirement” for one important assignment. I’m hoping you can help with it.
The truth is, I have been far from fully retired since leaving my time as head of Catholic Charities. I love being chaplain at St. John’s College High School about 20 hours a week. I love my busy sacramental ministry of Baptisms, weddings, and funerals. I love being part of the community at St. Bart’s Parish in Bethesda, where I am in residence.
This new assignment has me helping with the archdiocese's development. When Cardinal McElroy arrived last March, he realized we had serious financial issues that needed to be addressed. He has done a magnificent job putting us on the right track and even balancing the budget for the coming year.
It was not easy. We were forced to reduce staff at the Pastoral Center purely for economic reasons. Cardinal McElroy also spoke with some of our major donors to ask for help, and they responded with their usual generosity.
Cardinal McElroy has asked me to help him find the next director of stewardship and development, a position I once held. I am working with eight wonderful people, and we will soon present to the cardinal the top two or three candidates we believe could be great leaders of that important department.
We are also looking at the Annual Appeal, one of the two pillars of financial support for the archdiocese. Our parishes are the other source. They give a portion of their offertory to the diocese to help finance its many works.
Quite honestly, the Annual Appeal has slipped in recent years in both dollars and donors. Many stopped giving because they were concerned with the state of the Church and the issues with the McCarrick years. I hope we can move forward now.
The impact is significant, and I am trying to get the Appeal back on track because it is critical to so many ministries. Here is just a short list of beneficiaries: training of seminarians and priests who serve us; providing chaplains to hospitals, college campuses, and prisons; caring for the poor and needy.
All are central to the Gospel. Each would be drastically diminished without our support for the Annual Appeal.
The Appeal helps the archdiocese live Jesus’ command to care for the poor and needy in our midst, a command Pope Leo reemphasized in his recent apostolic exhortation. The Appeal enables us to do that in so many ways and so many places, from hospitals to the streets of Washington.
We are about to celebrate Thanksgiving and enter Advent, a season of giving. Many of us give gifts – sometimes numerous gifts – to family, friends, and coworkers for the holidays. Our sense of charity is also awakened between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
We might provide Thanksgiving dinner to a needy family or volunteer at a soup kitchen. We may donate to a coat drive. Many of us participate in our parish’s Angel Tree or Catholic Charities Christmas Star program to provide holiday gifts to families that can’t afford them. We also make end-of-year donations to our favorite charities.
I encourage you to prayerfully think about what you can do to support the Annual Appeal. Whatever you give directly helps our brothers and sisters in Christ. We need your help. Our neighbors need your help.
Please consider adding the Annual Appeal to your charitable giving for the end of this year and in 2026. I have tried to say “yes” throughout my priesthood to whatever God calls me to do. I am asking you to consider saying “yes” to those in need and to the Church of Washington, which I have been a part of for 52 years and still dearly love.
Pope Leo reminded us in his exhortation that caring for the poor is central to Christian love and our own pursuit of holiness. Supporting the good works of the archdiocese is a big part of that. We ourselves meet Jesus in more profound ways through our service, kindness, and charity.
(Msgr. John Enzler serves as the mission advocate of Catholic Charities of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington and is a chaplain at his alma mater, St. John’s College High School in Washington. He writes the Faith in Action column for the archdiocese’s Catholic Standard and Spanish-language El Pregonero newspapers and websites.)
