THIS week, we conclude our appeal for donations to the Church Times Train-A-Priest (TAP) Fund. We are happy to report that the 2022 grand total is £32,348. It’s a little lower than last year’s (£39,607.90), but we are, of course, grateful to all our readers for their generosity in straitened times.

As the Revd Leonard Mulogo, Principal of St Philip’s Theological College in Kenya, where some of the beneficiaries of TAP bursaries are studying, writes to the Ven. J. W. Kofi deGraft-Johnson, who distributes your gifts on our behalf: “The five students who were supported through the TAP bursary award are zealous to study theology for the service of the Church ministry. We shall always be grateful to you since you have made their dream to be realised.”

This is the third year that the Church Times TAP Fund has been directed to candidates training for ordination in Africa, in recognition that their circumstances are much more precarious than those of ordinands in the UK. On behalf of the African Provinces, we thank all who have donated so generously.

Although this is the end of this year’s appeal, the TAP Fund never closes. Future donors — people writing their wills, for example — can be confident that we will always stick to our pledge, first made in 1952, that every penny donated will go to supporting the next generation of priests.