I would like to thank Mission Fund through your newspaper for the donation of €2,500, of which €500 are for Mass intentions and €2,000 will go to subsidize biblical and religious material in the Santali language, the language of the largest tribe in India, the Santals. I have been in India for the last 60 years and after my priestly ordination, I have worked most of the time as parish priest among the Santals. Santal Parganas is the homeland of the Santals but, forced by poverty, they have migrated to many other northern states in India and settled there.

The Santal Catholics are now spread out in 17 other Dioceses and these in the diaspora rely on us from the homeland to give them biblical and religious material in Santali. I have been in charge of this ministry of religious publications for the last few years. Earlier this year, we reprinted another 10,000 prayer books and 10,000 hymnbooks apart from some other religious books. We will soon have to reprint the Altar Lectionary in Santali in three volumes which cover 3000 pages.

This year, due to increases in tax and cost of paper, the price of printing has increased dramatically. As most of these poor people cannot afford to buy these publications even at cost price, we have to subsidize them. The donation received from Mission Fund will be used for this purpose.

I would like to encourage Maltese people to send used stamps and donations to Mission Fund, which is helping so many Maltese missionaries in Third World countries. Donations can be made online or by direct bank transfer to one of the following accounts: HSBC (Account no. 061 197 448 050), BOV (Account no. 163 007 980 19), APS (Account no. 200 008 207 62) or BANIF (Account no. 000 879 631 01). More information is available from the website: www.missionfund.org.mt.

Mission Fund VO/0015

Fr Jos. M. Gauci Sacco SJ

Dumka

India