Latter-day Saints in Mexico Join Forces to Help More Than 142,000 Fellow Mexicans in Vulnerable Situations

As part of #ConstruyendoPuentes (#Building Bridges), a charitable initiative organized to help individuals and families struggling to make ends meet during the COVID-19 pandemic, Latter-day Saints in Mexico recently donated more than 7 million Mexican pesos to purchase 38,500 boxes of food that will be distributed to food pantries in Mexico.

Latter-day Saint Charities, the humanitarian arm of The Church of Jesus Christ, and Cáritas Mexicana, a member of Caritas Internationalis (a Catholic relief, development and social service organization), partnered to organize the donations.

Cáritas Mexicana will be in charge of distributing the food boxes to more than 30 of their food pantry locations throughout the Mexican republic. The charitable organization works with Catholic dioceses and archdioceses in 79 cities and serves low-income families regardless of their religious affiliation.

Items purchased and packed in food boxes, that will be distributed to Cáritas Mexicana food pantry recipients, include rice, beans, salt, cooking oil, sugar, soup, cornstarch, tuna, wheat and hygiene kits.

The Church’s first donation of food boxes went to the Archdiocese of Tlalnepantla's food pantry, where Elder Helamán Montejo, an Area Seventy and representative of the Area Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ in Mexico, highlighted the partnership between the Church and Cáritas Mexicana.

“We are very grateful to be able to join forces with you, our friends from Cáritas, on behalf of so many people that we know that when they receive this blessing they will surely raise a prayer of gratitude,” said Elder Montejo. “We hope this is not the only or the last time that we can join forces to bless the lives of God’s children through that love that unites us.

“For us, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, following the example of the Savior is the example we try to instill in our families. If we want to demonstrate love for God we have to love our neighbor no matter who we are, where we are. We even have to love beyond the beliefs we profess,” he said.

Father Rogelio Narváez Martínez, the executive secretary of Cáritas Mexicana, who attended an event to commemorate the delivery of food donations to the first food pantry location, emphasized that solidarity is the manifestation of authentic love.

“As a representative of the Catholic church, in social work, we thank the Latter-day Saints for this gesture of compassion, love and generosity,” said Father Narváez Martinez. “Our Latter-day Saint brothers don’t know the face [of the donation recipients], but they know what to do because they know where help is going to go.”

The Cáritas Mexicana official also expressed to Mexico’s Church Newsroom team that the work between different religions helps fulfill a mandate that Pope Francis extended during the February 2019 Global Conference on Human Fraternity.