By Harry Murphy

Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan, strongly backing the coming collection for inner-city work,, has urged pastors to support the collection and their parishioners will respond “with their typical generosity.”

Speaking to a Tuesday luncheon of pastors at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, he said people shouldn’t be concerned only with “what effects them directly, such as the education of their children, and not only with the poor which are on their doorstep.”

“Our people must be brought face to face with poverty…that is the only way they will be convinced of the need and will respond,” he added.

United States bishops agree that the outstanding issues in this country today are race and poverty, he said, but in spite of ten years of efforts by government, community, and the church there are still gaps between rich and poor and between black and white.

He urged the pastors attending the St. Vincent de Paul Society luncheon to “recognized the need for giving witness.” “This is a two way street,” the archbishop added. “Our people must not only be concerned with their parishes and their conferences, but must go a step further and manifest their concern for the inner city as well. We must build bridges of justice, concern and compassion.”

The head of the Atlanta archdiocese expressed a desire to tour the city’s slums “to see what we are doing and what we ought to be doing.”

The Sunday collection is not a “diversion of parish funds for other purposes,” the archbishop said, “but a use for which we all share a responsibility.”

He urged the pastors to continue their concern for the poor “without getting discouraged and without growing weary.”

“We are going to try to do that with this collection,” he said. “I know my job today is to push to collection and I’m glad to do it. Will you go out and push it some more?”

Joe Flanagan, the society’s executive director, said the money from the collection “helps us form a bridge between the poor and suburbia.”

He said the collection showed a 25% increase last year, about $12,000 to more than $16,000 and hopefully there will be a similar increase this year.

Projects financed by the increase will include day care and medical care centers.

Flanigan said that in addition to the $16,000 spent in inner city work last year, some $70,000 was spent by individual conferences in the archdiocese’s parishes.