Tagle urges flock: Fast, give money you save to poor kids

Here’s one way to lose weight while enriching one’s spirituality: Fast during the entire period of Lent and donate the money intended for your food to the hungry.

Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle is asking the faithful in the Archdiocese of Manila to participate in a fund-raising that will feed 250,000 malnourished children.

The campaign will be launched by Tagle on Feb. 13, Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent.

“In our conversion journey this Lent, my dear brothers and sisters, let our faith commit each one of us to become a living sign of the presence of God,” Tagle said in his pastoral letter for Ash Wednesday.

He said that participating in Fast2Feed was a “good opportunity to intensify the act of charity, which is faith in action.”

Tagle explained that giving alms was one of three main disciplines that the faithful were called upon to practice during Lent, along with praying and fasting.

“All these spiritual activities Jesus asks to be done without anything in return,” Tagle said.

Fast2Feed is intended for the Hapag-Asa feeding program of Pondo ng Pinoy, which has fed more than one million undernourished children since it was started in 2005.

Pondo ng Pinoy provides a food subsidy of P5 to P10 per day or P600 to P1,200 for six months per child. The program feeds children 6 months to 12 years old once a day, five days a week for six months.

For the Archdiocese of Manila, the target is to feed 3,000 children but this will require P3.6 million, Tagle said.

The cardinal appealed to his flock “to donate whatever you save from fasting to Hapag-Asa’s Fast2Feed Fund Campaign.”