Friends of Agnes Charitable Foundation’s mission is to give a better life for the underprivileged through works of charity.
“Friends of Agnes Charitable Foundation, Inc.” was established in 2019 for two predominant reasons . . .
The first reason was to honor my mother Agnes and, thus, to continue her legacy. My mother was a woman of great faith, simple and humble, but very generous towards the poor and needy. She had a compassionate heart for those who didn’t have much and always went out of her way to help them. Agnes died on June 10, 2006. A year later, in an effort to honor her name and continue her legacy of love for the poor, I founded the Agnes Multipurpose Development Society, a registered charitable organization based in India. The Friends of Agnes Charitable Foundation, Inc., founded in 2019, is a U.S.-based charitable organization whose aim is to enable the faithful in the U.S. to support the work of Agnes Multipurpose Development Society among the destitute poor of India.
The second reason is personal, influenced by both growing up in India and my formation as a Catholic priest. My childhood was not spent among the affluent of India but among the poor. The witness and experience of my youth and young adulthood afforded me a lived experience of poverty in the third world. That lived experience also ended up being a cornerstone of my future vocation.
So, at the age of thirteen, I went to a boarding seminary to study for the priesthood, with the goal of serving God and His people, but also with a special desire to serve the poor and lift them out of poverty. After ordination in 1994, God allowed me to serve the poor by working in the missions of India, where I was privileged to improve the lives of orphans and help those suffering from destitute poverty to a better life.
The establishment of the charities and their good works – 16 years and running for “Agnes Multipurpose Development Society” and now “Friends of Agnes Charitable Foundation, Inc.,” which better enables American support of the work in India–are both fulfillment of my mother’s legacy of service to the poor and my own vocation’s mission.
