Pope Benedict XVI to have 81^st Birthday in the United States

Pope Benedict will turn 81 on April 16, the second day of his six-day visit to the United States April 15-20. The project is called “Birthday Blessings for Pope Benedict XVI: A gift of public service from U.S. Catholic youth and students.

The project allows each student to choose how to spend his or her time volunteering. Acts of service are broadly defined as anything that helps another person or improves the environment. This may include canned food drives, visiting nursing homes, writing letters to members of the armed forces or shut-ins, raising money for a charity or cleaning up a local park.

“Young people have a passionate desire to make a difference,” NCEA President Dr. Karen Ristau said. “They are very creative and often know exactly what they can do to help someone or make an impact on their corner of the world.”

NCEA established a Web site, http://ncea.catholic.org, to help schools, parishes and individuals learn more about the effort and to register their volunteer hours. Service projects must be completed by May 31, 2008. Through an online “pledge form,” the site will gather information about the number of participants, the total hours volunteered and the kind of service provided. NCEA will release this information to the media and to diocesan education officials, so they can know how many hours were pledged by young people in that diocese. A running tally of the number of participants and the total number of hours pledged will be displayed on the project Web site.

To learn more about the “Birthday Blessings” project, call NCEA at (202) 337-6232 or go to: http://ncea.catholic.org/.