Dear Holy People of God,
Warm greetings of peace and health in Christ Jesus Our Lord.  For the financial year 2019/2020, we budgeted $30,000 for our Grand Annual Appeal.  Thus far, we have been able to raise $15,737, leaving us with the deficit of $14,263. I sincerely thank all those who have responded to the Grand Annual appeal for 2019/2020.  While we have our monthly maintenance and repairs collection, meant to help with the maintenance and repairs of our three buildings: the Church, our parish centre and the rectory, the volume of repairs that we had to do could simply not be done with the maintenance collections only. Take, for instance, just the boiler et al. repairs of our parish centre cost us over $14,000. The boiler of the Church and other things needed for landscaping cost us over $7,500. So you can see that just these three items alone placed us in the neighborhood of over $20.000.  I am not oblivious of the fact that these are very challenging times, financially, not only health-wise. But the little I have learned about Ste. Anne's is that when push comes to shove, Ste. Anne's has always risen to the challenge of the moment. I wish to invite you to consider the spiritual value of what you do when you contribute to the Grand Annual: it is a thanksgiving. You are saying to God, thank you for the gift of my life, the gift of family, friends, faith, our Church, et cetera. In spite of the difficult times, we can still see reasons to be thankful to God. We will be closing the 2019/2020 Grand Annual on Sunday, November 8, 2020. I wish to appeal to all those that are yet to give to the Grand Annual to kindly consider doing so. In a special way, knowing that many are unable to give for one reason or the other, I wish to appeal to all those that have given before and can still give something, to consider making an additional tax-deductible gift. The two Sundays that we have before November 8th will be used in reaching out to all. I will end with this Scripture: "I will not offer to the Lord, a sacrifice that will cost me nothing" (2 Samuel 24:24). Thank you and God bless you, Fr. Maurice.

Donations may be made via check mailed to the Parish Office, 11 Cleveland Street, Salem, MA 01970 or online via our Online Giving site here.