ACN-USA News - ACN supports the Church in the time of the pandemic

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

 

ACN rejoices on 100th anniversary of the birth of Pope Saint John Paul II

POPE Saint JOHN PAUL II made history and became one of the giants of the 20th century, both in the history of the Church and that of the wider world. Likewise unwavering and often historic were the projects he promoted and which on so many occasions Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) made its own.

“Pope John Paul II is a friend of our charity,” wrote Father Werenfried van Straaten, the founder of ACN. “We know him as a man of great courage, unwavering in his faith and with a filial love for the Virgin Mary. God willing, under his guidance may the resurrection of the Lord become a resurrection of the Church.”

May 18, 2020 marks 100th anniversary of his birth. Today ACN continues to commend its activities to the intercession of Saint John Paul II.

ACN’s earliest contacts with Karol Wojtyla go back to even before he was appointed archbishop of Cracow in 1964. For many years, as the representative of the Polish bishops’ conference, the man who would be elected Pope in 1978 had been in frequent contact with the charity to discuss projects for the support of the Church in Poland, which was then under Communist rule.

The first time ACN teamed up with him was in 1967 when the Communists built a satellite city on the outskirts of Cracow for steelworkers at a large smelting plant. Their plan was to build a “city without God” for up to 200,000 people and, in line with their imposition of an atheist ideology, they included no plans for a church of any description. In spite of this, in the new town of Nowa Huta, on Sunday after Sunday, thousands of Polish Catholics gathered around a large cross to join in the celebration of Mass.

Despite all the efforts the Communists to try and deter them, they finally managed, with the financial support of ACN, to build a church there, big enough to accommodate 5,000 worshippers. In 1977, Archbishop Wojtyla was finally able to consecrate this church. This victory against the Communist government also sent a powerful signal to neighboring countries similarly oppressed by Soviet Communist rule.

In 1978, ACN immediately placed itself unconditionally at the service of the pontificate of the future Saint John Paul II. One of his profound desires was for reconciliation, and thus it was that, following the collapse of Communism, he entrusted to ACN the work of reconciliation with the Russian Orthodox Church. To this end, and despite his advanced age, Father Werenfried traveled twice to Russia to meet with Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II and many of the other Orthodox bishops.

Pope John Paul II was Pope for 27 years, writing 14 encyclicals and close to a hundred apostolic exhortations, as well as innumerable letters and homilies. In more than a hundred different apostolic journeys, he visited more than 130 countries and was seen in person by some 400 million people. He brought together and inspired millions of young people. In Manila, in the Philippines. He celebrated Holy Mass in front of 4 million people—the largest human gathering of all time.

Saint John Paul II was able to personally witness the fruits of ACN’s work. During his first visit to Kazakhstan in 2001, a little boy proudly presented him with a copy of the ACN Child’s Bible, published in his own Kazakh language. The Pope was delighted to see this little book, because it was he who had first inspired its publication.

In January 1979 in the city of Puebla, Mexico, when during his first foreign visit as the newly elected Pope, he presided at the Plenary Assembly of the Latin American bishops. It was at this assembly that Father Werenfried suggested to him that children needed something like a little Bible “so that the image of Jesus could become a living one in their hearts.” From this encounter was born the famous ACN Child’s Bible series, “God speaks to His Children,” one of the largest projects ever supported by ACN.

“The last time the Holy Father and Father Werenfried concelebrated the Eucharist together was in springtime. It was in April 2002; John Paul II’s breathing was already becoming very labored. At the end of the Mass he was barely able to speak. They smiled at each other; they embraced.”

“In a gesture that said everything, the Holy Father gave Werenfried his own Paschal Candle, together with an icon of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. It was their last earthly farewell.” That was how their last meeting was described by the Italian journalist Orazio Petrosillo, who himself died in 2007 and who personally witnessed their encounter.

A century after his birth, he has left behind an immense legacy, and one to which ACN has striven to remain faithful up to the present day. So many of the projects supported by the organization now bear the name of this holy Pope, who was canonized in 2014. For example, the diocesan seminary in Tombura Yambio in South Sudan; the catechists’ center in Itigi in Tanzania; the pastoral center for young people in Sarajevo, in Bosnia; and the Pope John Paul II Institute for the Family in Cotonou, Benin.

Numerous other projects today reflect the devotion of the countless Catholic faithful who wish to place their churches and chapels under the protection of Saint John Paul II, in every corner of the world—in a suburban satellite town of Havana, the Cuban capital; in a suburb of the Nicaraguan city of Boaco; in Belarus, in the university city of Baranovichi; and in the small town of Mutoko in Zimbabwe, home to simple peasant farmers and manual workers.

On Nov. 16, 1981 the Pope welcomed in audience the participants of the General Assembly of ACN, who were meeting in Rome, and said to them: “In the two millennia of the history of Christian love for neighbor, you have made an efficient and moving contribution, as expressed in the name of your association, ‘Aid to the Church in Need.’ I address myself to our beloved Father Werenfried van Straaten to express my gratitude, together with that of so many bishops, thousands of priests, religious brothers and sisters, novices, seminarians and millions of the Catholic faithful.”

“To all of you diligent collaborators in this beautiful work of ecclesial solidarity, I renew my words of encouragement and impart to you my particular apostolic blessing.” It is a blessing that the foundation still draws on today.

—Maria Lozano

With picture of Father van Straaten and St. John Paul II (© 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