Catholic Charities of Boston is aiming to double its donations this Ash Wednesday over previous years, citing increased demand for heating assistance and food pantries due in part to federal funding cuts.
Each year on Ash Wednesday, every Catholic church in the Archdiocese of Boston collects money for Catholic Charities during Mass. This year, the nonprofit is making what it calls a “special plea” amid increasing demand and rising costs, partly due to federal policies.
“We’ve been seeing traditional safety net programs unraveling,” said Kelley Tuthill, president and CEO of Catholic Charities Boston. “We anticipate more people coming to our food pantries, more people needing help keeping the bills paid, because the other programs just aren’t going to be there.”
Money collected on Ash Wednesday, the Christian holiday that marks the start of Lent, will support a variety of Catholic Charities operations, including stocking food pantries and running family shelters and youth programming, Tuthill said. She planned to visit Mass services throughout the state Wednesday, asking parishioners to “spend a minute thinking about, if they do have extra to give, that they think about sharing it through Catholic Charities with their neighbors to make sure that we keep people safe.”
Catholic Charities has seen its own federal funding cuts, and is relying more heavily this year on private donations. In past years, the nonprofit aimed for around $200,000 in Ash Wednesday donations. But this year, it’s hoping for upwards of $400,000, Tuthill said.
The nonprofit’s food pantries have especially been impacted by increasing demand. Last fall, Catholic Charities of Boston saw a 32% increase in household enrollments in food pantries between September and October as benefits were disrupted for thousands of Massachusetts families amid the longest government shutdown in history.
That demand has only increased, Tuthill said, especially as provisions in President Donald Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act” — which expanded work requirements for SNAP benefits — went into effect.
“So many people are having trouble getting enough food to put on their tables — we have not seen the numbers go down,” Tuthill said. “The SNAP crisis last fall illustrated for everyone how many people rely on assistance, either from SNAP or from a food pantry.”
The nonprofit’s pantries serve about 70,000 people annually, and last fall, it struggled to keep them stocked. Tuthill said community members “rely on” them for food. But the cuts in Washington D.C. were felt by Catholic Charities in “very stark ways,” she added.
“When I went down to our Brockton pantry, for example, I had never seen the shelves so empty. It really took your breath away,” she said. The agency is now rebuilding the food supplies that were depleted last fall.
Some of the money collected Wednesday will also go toward heating assistance support, another critical need for Massachusetts households, said Melissa White, director of programs at the Valley Opportunity Council. The agency runs the largest heating assistance program in the state, serving about 20,000 households during the winter.
White said that federal funding for fuel assistance programs, which help eligible low-income households with heating bills during the winter and spring seasons, was cut roughly in half this year amid a harsher-than-usual winter.
Fewer benefits, colder weather and higher energy costs in general have left some households without money to afford heat, with weeks of winter remaining, White said.
“It leads people to be making difficult decisions, ‘Can I buy groceries or can I stay warm?’” White said.
She called the situation this year “unprecedented,” adding that heat assistance programs haven’t been impacted by this kind of funding decrease in “at least eight to 10 years.”
“It costs more to heat your home … So prices have gone up, but the amount of assistance has gone down,” White said.
Tuthill said Catholic Charities has seen an increase in the need for emergency heating assistance as cold weather grips the area. Residents have called, emailed and reached out on social media for help.
“None of us wants to think about a senior citizen or a small child being in an apartment or a home that’s freezing because they can’t pay the bills to keep the heat on,” she said. “People are feeling that stress and we are hearing from them.”
“Our job is to make sure we support our neighbors who might be in need,” she added. “So we’re constantly assessing, are we meeting those needs and are there other ways we could deliver our services so that nobody slips through the cracks?”
