COVID-19 is not only a medical, social and
economic problem, but also a pastoral one. Since the outbreak of the
pandemic, Aid to the Church in Need has learned of growing hardships and
the heroic efforts of priests and religious in the
battle against coronavirus. In response, the organization has initiated
a special program to promote these efforts.
Regina Lynch, project director at ACN, spoke
recently about current relief initiatives and the efforts of the Church
during the COVID-19 crisis.
What are we currently hearing from our project partners regarding the greatest needs in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic?
From our project partners in Africa, Asia, Latin
America and Central and Eastern Europe, we are not so much hearing about
medical needs but rather about the effects of the restrictions on the
daily life of the Church. In most countries
where Aid to the Church in Need supports the local Church, governments
have applied the same restrictions as in our donor countries. That means
no public Masses, no public gatherings, schools are closed and more and
more people have difficulty in earning a
living. And these in countries where, for the most part, Christians are
a minority—sometimes persecuted—and belong to the lower social strata.
The Church itself is hardest hit by the fact that
there are no public Masses or the possibility to carry out the normal
pastoral and social programs in the parishes. In many of our partner
countries, the collection at Sunday Mass ensures
the survival of the parish. The money from the collection—or often
instead it can be chickens, vegetables, rice etc.—guarantees that the
priest can eat, pay the Sisters serving the parish, buy petrol for his
motorcycle for visiting the sick or even have a
small sum to help the poorest of the parishioners.
What is the focus of ACN’s aid in response to the COVID-19 crisis?
As a pastoral charity, ACN wants to help the local
Church carry out its primary mission of bringing God’s Love and Word to
people and ensure that it is not hindered in this mission by a lack of
financial resources. That means that we are
providing subsistence aid to priests and to Sisters, both active and
contemplative. We have continued to help the seminaries, as in many
cases the seminarians are in confinement and the rector has no means to
look after them.
For example, in the major seminary in Goma, Dem.
Rep. Congo, the rector sent us an SOS, as he could no longer rely on the
local population to help feed the seminarians. We are providing funds
for masks and other protective clothing to priests,
Sisters and seminarians, for example in Chile or in Ukraine, where they
continue to visit their parishioners, particularly the sick or the
dying.
And in order to bring Mass and the Gospel message
to the faithful at home via television or radio, we have funded the
necessary technical equipment.
For the Christians in Syria, who were already
struggling to survive after nine years of war, we are launching a
special program enabling each family to buy food and some form of
protection against the pandemic. In Pakistan, another country
where Christians face discrimination and sometimes persecution because
of their faith, we are working on a program to come to provide aid
because we heard from the Church that the Christians were not receiving
emergency aid from the government.
ACN started an emergency program in order that
the priests and Sisters could face the challenges of the COVID-19
pandemic. What have you done so far and what are the next steps?
Thanks to the generosity of our donors since March,
we have managed to send out more than 385,000 Mass stipends (more than
$3.4M) to more than 10,500 priests. More than half of these went to the
Church in Africa, the continent where the
Church and priestly vocations continue to grow but where the Church
faces the challenge of an increasingly aggressive form of Islam,
conflicts and natural disasters.
So far, we have made promises of some $880,000 as
subsistence help to Sisters in all parts of the world and more requests
are coming in. This has always been a strong focus of our help for
Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America in
particular, where the Sisters not only teach catechism or prepare the
faithful for the sacraments in isolated regions in Siberia or in the
Andes, but where the Sisters also care for orphans, for the abandoned
elderly or for girls forced into prostitution.
One of the effects of the COVID-19 crisis is that
we are being asked to help for the first time in dioceses where until
now they have managed without our help. One example is the Diocese of
Kamyanets-Podilsk in Ukraine, where normally the
parish pays the Sisters. With the absence of Sunday Mass and the
growing poverty of the faithful, the bishop no longer can give the
Sisters what they need to survive.
What about aid to Asia, where the COVID-19 pandemic first emerged?
The Archbishop of Chittagong in Bangladesh sent us
an urgent appeal for the Sisters working in his archdiocese. With the
schools, hostels and dispensaries closed, there is no income to pay the
Sisters. Even before the crisis, the little
amount that the faithful could contribute to the upkeep of the Sisters
was not enough but now the situation has become dramatic. In Mymensingh,
also in Bangladesh, the Holy Cross Sisters together with the bishop are
putting all the money available into helping
the people, who are suffering, but the Sisters need to survive and that
is where ACN can help. In normal times the Holy Cross Sisters, like
many Sisters in the developing world, teach the Gospel and also teach
the people the skills they need to leave behind
their poverty.
From the very beginning, ACN has been dedicated
to helping not only the active, but also the contemplative orders. How
are they faring?
We should also not forget the contemplative nuns,
who responded enthusiastically to our prayer campaign at the beginning
of the COVID-19 pandemic but who also depend on the generosity of the
faithful and their own small income-generating
initiatives for their survival. The Carmelite Monastery in Santa Cruz,
Bolivia, has difficulty surviving at the best of times by the production
of hosts for Mass, but with the current restrictions there is no demand
for the hosts and so the Archdiocese of
Santa Cruz has appealed to generous donors of ACN to help the nuns
through this difficult time.
We expect to continue these projects of support for
priests and Sisters for the next few months, because even if in some
countries public Mases are beginning to recommence, the economic
situation will worsen and our help will be needed
more than ever. In other countries the pandemic is still raging.
Which project, where priests and Sisters respond to the COVID-19 crisis, has particularly impressed you?
It is very difficult to pick out one project. There
are the priests in the Diocese of Dolisie, Congo, who share the stipend
from our Mass intentions with their poor parishioners. I am also
impressed by the devotion of so many Sisters, who
at risk to themselves continue their work.
One example are the Hermanas Sociales in Cuba.
While respecting the restrictions put in place, they still find a way to
continue their pastoral work and their care of the elderly, who live
alone, and their outreach to the homeless.
There are the seminarians in the major seminary of
St. Peter and St. Paul in Burkina Faso, whose families have become IDPs
because of terrorist attacks. Now they have lost one of their formators
due to the virus and four of their fellow
students are ill. We have helped them and their families and are now
also sponsoring a program to protect the rest of them from COVID-19.
And we have to recognize the creativity of the
Church. Quite early on in the crisis, Bishop Dode Gjergji of Kosovo
realized that he had to try to reach his faithful despite the ban on
public Masses and asked us to sponsor equipment for
broadcasting Sunday Mass from the Mother Teresa co-cathedral in
Pristina. We gladly provided him support and just recently he has told
us that during one Mass broadcast online in Albanian there were more
than 50,000 people logged on.
This is where we should not underestimate the power
of the media. In Africa, where we support different initiatives of
Radio Maria, the Church is encouraging the Catholic families to become a
“domestic Church” during this time of COVID-19
and to pray even more intensively together.
ACN is a pastoral charity: in public life the
focus is on the humanitarian and medical sectors. How do we reconcile
ACN’s response with these needs?
While a medical, and in many countries,
humanitarian response to the COVID-19 crisis is absolutely necessary,
this is first and foremost the responsibility of the local civil
authorities. We know that in many countries where ACN helps,
this does not happen and that NGOs and the Church do this work
instead. However, while the ministry of charity or diakonia is one of
the ministries of the Church, the pastoral mission, the care of the soul
precedes it and in this time of crisis the people
need the Church more than ever.
They are afraid and unsure of the future. The
Church comforts and brings both spiritual and material help to not only
its own flock but to all God’s people. We have just granted subsistence
help to four elderly and sick Dominican Sisters
in Subotica, Serbia.
Their superior wrote to us, “The people of Subotica
are grateful for the presence of the Sisters, because they are the sign
of God’s love for the people, the sign of everlasting life.”
—Tobias Lehner
With picture of displaced family in the Diocese of Dori
(©
ACN)
Editor’s Notes:
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 fax 718-609-0938. Aid to the Church in Need,
725 Leonard Street, PO Box 220384, Brooklyn, NY 11222-0384.
www.churchinneed.org