Using funds from an annual speical collection, the Subcommittee on the Church in Latin America awarded $2.5 million to 135 pastoral projects. “The Church in Latin America has suffered greatly from political oppression, civil war, economic turmoil, and societal neglect of those on the margins,” said Bishop Octavio Cisneros, retired auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn and chairman of the US bishops’ Subcommittee on the Church in Latin America.