ACN News - ACN marks 60th anniversary of providing “Vehicles for God”

ACN-USA News

2/3/2010
ACN marks 60th anniversary of providing “Vehicles for God”


This year, 2010, international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is celebrating the 60th anniversary of providing “Vehicles for God.”

It was 60 years ago that ACN’s founder, Father Werenfried van Straaten, began his first great campaign to provide "Vehicles for God," as the initiative was then called. The center for all this activity quickly became the small town of Königstein, in the Taunus hills, close to the city of Frankfurt, Germany, where ACN still has its international headquarters today.

It was in Königstein, on what is now known as "Father Werenfried Square," that the various vehicles would initially be gathered: motorcycles, VW 'Beetles,' and converted trucks and buses – the famous "chapel trucks" which not only carried food and clothing but also had a 'fold-out' altar in the center.

Altogether some 35 of “chapel trucks” were created, all bearing the names of saints and angels, and traveling out with the priests to the scattered groups of German Catholic refugees in areas where Catholic churches did not exist or had been destroyed.

Starting as early as 1949, some 3,000 'rucksack priests' were supported by the charity so that they could minister to the millions of uprooted Catholics in a devastated post-war Germany. They began with bicycles; then later they were equipped with motorcycles. Finally, even the famous VW 'Beetles,' were provided in their hundreds by Father Werenfried and his campaign.

Father Werenfried’s outreach to former foes was not without controversy. Some charged him with "helping the enemy" or of having political objectives. Others accused him of exploiting the poverty of the refugees to pursue a "Catholic mission" in overwhelmingly Protestant northern Germany.

Undeterred, Father Werenfried later wrote about these years, "In the face of the ferocious opposition I encountered then, it was the forgiving love of my own countrymen and the loving gratitude of the German refugees that were for me the clearest proof of God's blessing."

What this young Dutch priest had begun immediately after the war, in Germany, very soon continued in other countries. Initially it was the persecuted and oppressed Christians of Eastern Europe, those suffering under communist dictatorships, who he helped. Before long, it was the suffering Church around the world.

An inspiring preacher, Werenfried van Straaten appealed tirelessly for donations, usually taking the collection personally in his famous "hat of millions."

Thanks to the generosity of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, over the course of five decades the charity has been able to fund and supply thousands of cars, boats, bicycles, trucks, motorcycles – and even horses and donkeys – to support the Church in her pastoral mission.

In 1998, ACN, which, since the mid-1990s, in a new departure following the political upheavals in Eastern Europe, had begun to help for certain projects of the Russian Orthodox Church, also helped fund the creation of the first ever "chapel boat" on the River Volga. Today there are three such boats, traveling along the rivers Volga and Don and ministering to isolated communities of believers there. One of them even bears the name "Werenfried."

It is no longer possible today to accurately state the exact number of vehicles supplied by ACN since the program began, but between 1994 and 2009 alone no fewer than 6,352 cars, over 1,000 motorcycles, 80 motorboats and 6,650 bicycles were supplied by the charity in support of the Church's pastoral outreach.


With picture of chapel truck in the 1950s


Editor’s Notes:

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Directly under the Holy Father, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity - helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Father Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity,” the organization is now at work in over 145 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 43 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information contact Michael Varenne at michael@churchinneed.org or call 718-609-0939 or fax718-609-0938. Aid to the Church in Need, 725 Leonard Street, PO Box 220384, Brooklyn, NY 11222-0384. www.churchinneed.org