Standing outside of Corpus Christi Church, Mary Jane Densmore, left, and Nora Uricchio, right, display one of 500 personal care and goodie bags their team from Christ the King Parish in Wethersfield created for homeless individuals. The bags will be distributed through ImmaCare outreach in Hartford. (Photo by Shelley Wolf/Archdiocese of Hartford)

By Shelley Wolf

WETHERSFIELD – The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Rice Bowl collection is a faith-in-action program that invites all Catholics to make a difference in their local community and around the world. Even during the pandemic, parishioners at Christ the King Parish in Wethersfield are moving that mission forward in their community.

The parish received a $1,000 CRS grant last fall, which the Christ the King Social Action Committee transformed into a Homeless Bag Project this winter, delivering 500 bags with snacks, clothing and personal care items to ImmaCare in Hartford for distribution to the homeless.

“We’ve been affiliated with ImmaCare all the way back to their days as a parish ministry at Immaculate Conception Church,” says Mary Jane Densmore, co-coordinator of the project.  “That’s our Catholic calling – social ministry and social justice – to make sure that we recognize that all of God’s children are our brothers and sisters and that we are all equal.”

Because of the generosity of the grant from CRS, Densmore says, “we increased our numbers from 250 to 500 bags and reached almost all of the homeless living in the streets of Hartford.”

The project team achieved another milestone this year. “In addition to reaching all of the homeless, we reached a secondary goal of using no plastic materials,” she says, “making the bags fully biodegradable and completely eco-friendly.”

And the project team, which is comprised of adult parishioners as well as youths who participate in religious education classes, accomplished this work while wearing masks and taking other safety precautions to stay safe.

Parishioners of all ages, including religious education students, pitched in to assemble bags for the homeless in the hall of Sacred Heart Church, also part of Christ the King Parish in Wethersfield. (Photos courtesy Christ the King Parish)

“The 2020 Homeless Bag Project was a huge undertaking and could not have been possible without the extraordinary generosity of numerous people who donated time and money and hard work,” Densmore says.

The project began last fall and concluded with a three-day packing event in January. The work involved moving hundreds of bags and boxes from the basement of a home to Sacred Heart Church hall, and setting up five assembly stations with all the items intended for the bags. Volunteers packed the bags with items such as hats, gloves, socks, toothbrushes, protein bars, cheese crackers, chicken salad, Cheez-its, juice boxes and prayer cards.

The 24 volunteers assembled all 500 bags in less than an hour. Two days later, five volunteers packed the 500 bags into one truck and three SUVs, delivering them to ImmaCare in Hartford. ImmaCare, a nonprofit agency that tackles homelessness in the Hartford area, provides mobile outreach to the homeless, a shelter and supportive housing.

Nora Uricchio, co-coordinator of the Homeless Bag Project, has been involved with the Christ the King Parish Social Action Committee for just two years. “A lot of people on our Social Action Committee are just incredible, they have incredible faith, an incredible prayer life, and they bring that alive with social action,” she says.

“Being a newcomer,” Uricchio adds, “I’m in awe of their faith and that they’re bringing that to God’s people, and especially to the homeless who more often than not are the poorest of the poor. What a gift to be able to do this, to do something to help.”

Alms donated through CRS Rice Bowl during the Lenten season support the work of Catholic Relief Services in more than 100 different countries. Each year, 25 percent of the funds collected in the Archdiocese of Hartford remain in the archdiocese, where they are distributed as grants to parish-based programs that alleviate hunger and poverty. Grant applications are accepted through August 31 and awards are distributed in November for use the following year.

This year, grants were awarded to 11 parishes within the archdiocese for a variety of charitable projects such as sandwich making for shelters, Thanksgiving baskets for food pantries, breakfasts and dinners in church halls, and emergency food assistance.

CRS Rice Bowl grants are distributed through the Archdiocese of Hartford’s Office for Catholic Social Justice Ministry.