Economic Solidarity

The Office of Economic Solidarity is composed of the President, the Secretary, the Vice-secretary, the Promoter of Solidarity, the Projects Manager and the international Commission of economic solidarity.

The essential function of the economic solidarity of the Order is that to organize the distribution of the resources laced in common of the various circumscriptions of the Order and from their benefactors. The Promoter of the solidarity is appointed to regularly solicit the Provinces so that they can raise these resources.

The Office receives requests for financial assistance by means of pre-established forms by 30 July. Requests presented after the date-limit of 30 July are postponed until the following year. Only projects connected to the maintenance of our brothers in initial formation and of our brother missionaries may arrive a bit late, but no later than 15 September.

The requests received are submitted for examination by the Projects Managers who give their advice concerning their conformity with our priorities, the technical integrity of the projects, the reality of the plans of financing and the concrete validity of the proposals.

The recommendations of the Project Managers are transmitted to the International Commission of Economic Solidarity which gathers in October, studies all of the requests presented to the Office, receives the advice of the Project Managers and makes their recommendations to the Definitory general.

It is the Minister general with his Definitory who takes all of the decisions relative to the requests for financial assistance and subsequently communicates these to the Office of economic Solidarity, which then prepares the payment of the approved sums.

The payment of the granted amount to the diverse projects is deposited after the first half of the following year.

At the end of the year the Office sends to all of the Ministers of the Order and to the Presidents of the federations of Capuchin Poor Clares the book which contains the projects which were presented and the decisions of the Definitory general. The book also contains information concerning the payments of moneys between the circumscriptions. For this reason the Office relies on the collaboration of the Provinces keeping the information by means of a simple formula placed at their disposal.


Offices of the Economic Solidarity