The Bench's "Helping Hands"

In what might've made for the most meaningful work of this week, on the eve of the Plenary a good number of bishops joined students from the Baltimore/Washington area for a mass assembling of meals for Catholic Relief Services' efforts in Burkina Faso, where a recent drought's impact on agriculture has spurred a food crisis.

According to the hometown Catholic Review, some 30 prelates – almost all of them donning the required hair-nets – took shifts to prepare and box the meal-packs alongside the volunteers from nearby Catholic high schools and colleges. The "Helping Hands" service project was held in one of the mammoth hallways that link the meeting rooms used by the conference over the days.

Together, the group readied over 30,000 meals through Sunday afternoon; here's a Review recap of the gathering:


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