Aid to Africa one cup at a time

A group of Capuchin friars in Poland is using the order's historical link to cappuccino to raise money to help Africans.

Coffee shops in six Polish cities have joined in the money raising campaign "Cappuccino for Africa" to fund missions the Kraków-based friars are running in the Central African Republic and Chad.

A project coordinator, Piotr Gajda, said a friar got the idea for the charity last year while drinking a coffee, and wondering how the order's association with the pleasurable drink could be used to help the missions.

The group says proceeds from selling one cappuccino in Poland can provide 10 hot meals for children in the Central African Republic.

Capuchin monks have been often credited with inspiring the name for the frothy coffee drink because of their coffee-colored habits.

But, the drink is Polish in origanation, and don’t let Italians tell you different. Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki who acted as a spy against the Ottoman Empire prior to the Battle of Vienna opened the earliest coffeehouse in Europe in 1683.

He discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Turkish encampments. Using this captured stock, Kulczycki added milk and honey to sweeten the bitter coffee, thereby inventing cappuccino.

Kulczycki remains a popular folk hero and the patron of all Viennese café owners. Until recently, every year in October a special Kolschitzky feast was organized by the café owners of Vienna, who decorated their shop windows with Kulczycki's portrait. Kulczycki is also memorialized with a statue on Vienna's Kolschitzky Street.