Press Releases
ANNUAL SITOUT FOR CHARITIES AT BELFAST CATHEDRAL
The Cathedral Church of St. Anne' Donegall Street, Belfast BT1 2HB
Thursday 18th December to Wednesday 24th December 1997
Official Opening on Thursday 18th December at 10.30 am
The Dean of Belfast, the Very Rev Jack Shearer, dressed in his familiar balaclava and black cloak starts his annual Christmas Sitout for local charities on the steps outside St. Anne's Cathedral on Thursday 18th December.
He will continue standing outside the Cathedral with his collecting barrel each day from 8am to 6pm until Christmas Eve. By Christmas, Eve Dean Shearer (who is nicknamed Black Santa) hopes to have raised over £170,000. This year's appeal is mainly for local charities but if sufficient is raised gifts may also be earmarked for Christian Aid or other Third World relief agencies.
This will be the Dean's twelfth Sitout over which time he has raised more than one million pounds. Last years sitout raised £160,000. Dean Shearer believes that one reason for the success of the Sitout is that it covers a large cross-section of local charities, many of them small.
He says "Many local charities are finding it difficult to survive. Some have even gone out of business.When people count up how much they spend on themselves and their own families at Christmas, I hope they will decide to spend something on the underprivileged and needy in their midst. Better still, I hope they will decide to do without a few luxuries so that they can give to others. That is what Christmas is all about - forgetting ourselves and thinking of others and especially the needy and underprivileged."
Support for the Sitout comes from a broad cross-section of the community and charities right across the board are helped. Preference is given to newer emerging charities who need the seed funding to get started. This year the emphasis will be on charities which help the aged, the lonely, the disabled, the depressed and the homeless.
Dean Shearer was also keen to emphasis that every pound collected during the Sitout will be distributed in January to local charities without deduction for expenses. The expenses in running the sitout are paid for directly by the Cathedral.
Further information from:
THE CHURCH OF IRELAND PRESS OFFICE
Church of Ireland House
61 - 67 Donegall Street
Belfast BT1 2QH