ROME: The Italian bishops conference relaunched its micro-credit initiative for families and small businesses, a program first begun in 2009 in response to the global financial crisis.
In the last four years, the “Loan for Hope” program has distributed more than $29 million in loans to families and small companies in Italy. It is carried out through the Intesa San Paolo Bank, on behalf of the Italian bishops and Caritas Italy.
We have provided loans to about 4,500 families, and 15 percent of them were small family companies or cooperative companies who got loans of $30,000 in order to replace furniture or write off the red of balance sheets which occurred with the economic crisis,” Fr. Andrea La Regina of Caritas Italy told CNA Feb. 27.
The Italian Bishops conference employed an endowment of about $30 million, coming from a national collection of money launched in 2009 that collected some $2 million dollars, and part of the fund of the Italian state tax for religions.
