The cupboard isn’t bare at Immaculate Conception Church in the northeast Bronx where the soup kitchen is now serving between 150 and 180 people a day. But volunteer cook Carmen Santiago readily ticks off all the food items they’re short on.

“We need (cooking) oil, we don’t have any coffee, sugar, milk, potatoes, mixed vegetables, salt, we don’t need rice, rice we have a lot,” she said.

“This is the most tight we’ve seen it. When we cook we have to go looking for things to make because sometimes there is nothing.”

Still, no one who comes to the soup kitchen is turned away. “Everyone who comes here eats. They don’t go without eating,” assured Brother Lombardo D’Auria, O.F.M. Cap., who helps coordinate the Helping Hands soup kitchen, which operates daily in the church basement from Monday to Friday, with different parish volunteer groups lending a hand in the cooking and serving.

“All the groups are very creative and try to provide a healthy meal because for some of these people this is the only meal they will have,” Brother D’Auria said. “Right now the (parish) community has been providing food besides the small supplies we get from the food bank and other agencies. It’s not a rich community, it’s a mixed community. But what little they have, they share.”

The situation at Immaculate Conception is not unique. Across the archdiocese’s 10 counties, food pantries and soup kitchens are dealing with ever-increasing demands and fewer resources as lingering economic woes continue to push people to the brink of poverty and beyond. Last year, agencies operated or supported by archdiocesan Catholic Charities provided 6.1 million meals to struggling people.

More than 800,000 people in the 10-county region, or 12 percent of our neighbors, are experiencing difficulty affording food. Families with children fare worse, with more than 22 percent having difficulty affording food.

At Thanksgiving, Archbishop Dolan announced an initiative calling on every Catholic institution in the archdiocese—parishes, schools, charitable institutions and other organizations—to take part in a “Feed Our Neighbors” campaign Sunday to Sunday, Jan. 22 to 29, to increase the supply of food available to hungry New Yorkers through a collection of food goods or money.

“I am proposing one specific initiative for our Catholic community that I hope might inspire others to do likewise,” he stated. “This initiative cannot resolve the problem, for it is impossible to make up all the reductions in resources. However, the fact we cannot do everything is not an excuse to do nothing.”

Catholic Charities is coordinating the initiative. There are three ways to participate: make a donation to a collection in your parish to support emergency food programs, participate in the food drive from Jan. 22 to Jan. 29 or volunteer at a food pantry.

Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, executive director of archdiocesan Catholic Charities, said the problem is not one of a food shortage in New York City and the surrounding area, but rather one of food affordability.

“Clearly there is enough food in New York City, but people don’t have the money to buy it. And we’re talking about the basics,” Msgr. Sullivan told CNY. “The cost of food has gone up so that you have coming together a number of different factors that mean a lot of poor people are having an incredibly hard time getting enough to eat. This feeding our neighbor campaign is our Catholic response to try to replenish food pantries for our neighbors of all religions.”

Carlos Rodriguez, consulting food initiative coordinator for Catholic Charities, says a combination of economic factors, has created a “perfect storm.”

“One the one hand you have this economy that’s producing 9 percent unemployment, and at the same time you have dwindling (food bank) resources,” he explained. “Donations aren’t as robust as they used to be. Manufacturers are finding alternative markets, so they are able to send food overseas and make a penny on the dollar and that’s more profitable than making a charitable contribution. And, of course, so many folks that perhaps used to be able to put two cans of corn or a couple of cans of tuna into a food basket may not now even have the resources themselves. On the government side you are seeing the same funding is simply not stretching out the same way because food costs have gone up. On the other side of the coin you are seeing more people on these (food) lines.”

At Immaculate Conception, Father Robert Williams, O.F.M. Cap., has seen the number of guests that the Helping Hands program serves daily increase considerably in the past two years. He also pointed out that several other soup kitchens in the Bronx, church-based and otherwise, have had to close in recent months because they lacked the funds to continue, sending even more hungry people his way. He said his parish has been receiving help from other churches, synagogues and institutions in the community to keep operating but he described the food supply situation at his parish as “precarious” with government funding from all levels down and the number of guests his volunteers serve daily dramatically up. He said he welcomes the archbishop’s initiative.

“Anything to get the word out,” he said, “especially at this time of year.”

Michael Seay, 52, a northeast Bronx shelter resident who has been unemployed since last summer with a 16-year-old son to feed, has been a regular at Immaculate Conception’s soup kitchen for several months. He pronounced the chicken soup he was served on Jan. 6 “excellent.”

“I’m blessed, I’m really blessed and I’m thankful and grateful for everything that they do here,” he told CNY. “When I first came here I felt a little embarrassed until I realized it’s nothing to be embarrassed about because you’re not the only one in this position, and it’s more and more since I started coming here. Once you pay your rent, whatever is left over is not much. So you come here and you can get a meal. There’s a lot of hungry people out there.”

Readers wishing to donate directly to an emergency food program can access a list of participants on the Catholic Charities webpage at: catholiccharitiesny.org/feedingourneighbors.