Caritas Bangladesh celebrates campaign the “Season of Creation”

Caritas Bangladesh, the social action arm of the Catholic Church, has officially closed a month-long campaign for the “Season of Creation,” which began on September 1.

Caritas Bangladesh, along with all the regional office, celebrated the closing with the theme of “Season of Creation: Restoring Our Common Home” as the Caritas family worldwide and with reverence to the invitation of the Holy Father, Pope Francis.

The objective was to focus on the pastoral care of our “common home,” offer prayers to be inspired anew by closeness to nature and undertake prophetic actions.

Mr. Sebastian Rozario, the Executive Director of Caritas Bangladesh, said, “Though we are observing the closing of the “Season of Creation” today, it is also the new beginning for our actions to save our mother earth.”

“I encouraged all the caritas staff members to follow simple lifestyle or practice some of the actions in personal, family and community life,” said Mr. Rozario.

The closing event was moderated by Dr. Arook Toppo, which included reading from “Laudato Si,” prayers, reflection and personal sharing. All the staff members of Caritas Central Office Dhaka participated in the program.

Mr. Ronjon J. P. Rozario, regional director of Caritas Dinajpur, said, “We observed the closing event for the “Season of Creation” at our regional office premises. The main theme of the closing event was “Restoring Our Common Home”. The special closing event included sharing the theme, individual commitment to doing more to save our ‘common home’, personal reflection and tree plantation.

Mr. Apurbo Mrong, regional director of Caritas Mymensingh, said, “Considering this day the staff members of the region committed for tree plantation, reducing the use of plastic commodities, control over the use of energy/power, gardening in homestead, less use of water, etc.”

Mr. Francis Bepari, regional director of Caritas Barishal, said, “This occasion is the part of ‘Laudato Si.’ It’s an ongoing process to save our earth. We all are the dwellers of our common home. We have to take responsibility to save the nature”.

Father Terrence Rodriguez, Member of Caritas General Body, was the chief guest at the event in the regional office of Caritas Chattogram, and he “emphasized on the seven areas of focused in “Laudato Si” and placed an invitation to all the participants to live a life that shows sensitivity towards nature”.

Mr. Remi S. Das, regional director of Caritas Chattogram, “stated in his sharing that the closing marks the concrete beginning of our initiative to save the mother earth as the year-long campaign prepared us to embark on a journey of transforming ourselves to transform nature eventually.”

Caritas in Bangladesh was established in 1967 as the eastern branch of Caritas Pakistan. 

Following the cyclone of November 1970, it was re-organized and became known as CORR (Christian Organization for Relief and Rehabilitation) and took on the character of a national organization on January 13, 1971. 

The name Caritas was re-introduced in 1976.

Caritas Bangladesh has its Central Office in Dhaka with eight Regional (or Diocesan) Offices in Barishal, Chattogram, Dhaka, Dinajpur, Khulna, Mymensingh, Rajshahi and Sylhet. 

Caritas is operational in Integrated Development, Disaster Management and Human Resource Development, under central management in all these places. 

Caritas restricts itself at present to 208 Upazilas (sub-districts) for integrated human development work. During emergencies, such as natural disasters, Caritas is operational in any part of the country.

Caritas Bangladesh is a member of Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 165 Caritas Member Organizations over 200 countries and territories.