Aid to the Church in Need: ACN sends urgent aid to Iraq

ACN sends urgent aid to Iraq

Posted by Press release on 17/10/2008, 8:10 am
Board Administrator

ACN News, Friday, 17th October 2008 – IRAQ
With picture of Fr Joaquin Alliende, ACN International President

ACN sends urgent aid to Iraq

Charity offers help as exodus from Mosul sparks humanitarian crisis

By John Pontifex

CATHOLIC charity Aid to the Church in Need is sending emergency aid to help thousands of Iraqi Christians fleeing their ancient city in fear of their lives.
At the height of the Christian exodus from Mosul last weekend, more than 1,000 families were reported to have left within the space of 24 hours.
It puts Mosul at risk of being emptied of Christians in a city where the Church dates back to the 2nd Century.
Christians began fleeing Iraq’s second largest city late last month after Islamist extremists mounted a campaign of violence and intimidation with people under pressure to convert to Islam or face being killed or having their homes destroyed.
Reports now state 20 people have been killed. At least five houses have been blown up with TNT after the occupants were instructed to leave for failing to convert to Islam.
With church leaders reporting a humanitarian crisis, ACN is sending €30,000 ($58,000) to Christian towns and villages outside Mosul in the Nineveh plains where displaced people have been gathering in vast numbers.
The help, agreed after two comprehensive reports of the crisis were sent to ACN, will go towards food, shelter, medical aid and other urgent support critically needed, especially as winter approaches.
ACN’s new International President, Fr Joaquin Alliende, said: “The reports received from Mosul make horrifying reading and at a time of crisis, the support ACN is providing is the very least the charity can do to help.
“ACN exists to help our brothers and sisters who are suffering for their faith – and few are suffering more than those fleeing the killings, bombings and continuing intimidation which has swept Mosul these past days.”
“We urgently ask all the friends and benefactors of Aid to the Church in Need to pray to Christ who gave his life for us and who through his resurrection offers us true hope. We pray for all those who are persecuted at this terrible time.”

Fr Alliende

ACN’s emergency response comes after Iraq’s Archbishop Louis Sako warned that efforts by the government in Baghdad to quell the violence were too little, too late, and that the exodus threatened to extinguish the Christian presence in Mosul.
Widespread Christian emigration from Mosul was already far advanced last weekend by the time Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki agreed to send more than 2,500 troops to the city where extremists were killing Church members, blowing up their homes and sending threatening messages by phone and by letter.
Reports from leading clergy including Father Bashar Warda, based in Erbil, in the Kurdish north, have told how the crisis has put overwhelming pressure on towns and villages outside Mosul already grappling with an influx of displaced people from the city.
Speaking from Erbil earlier this week, Fr Warda told ACN: “The situation is altogether so horrifying. People who refuse to leave Mosul are being faced with terrible choices – risk being killed or having your home destroyed.”
He told how people from Mosul were leaving their homes and businesses behind to stay in church centres in towns and villages both in the Nineveh plains outside the city and beyond including Qaraqosh, Karamles, Alqosh, and further north towards Dohuk.
Fr Warda said the food aid channelled by ACN would include rice, cooking oil, sugar, milk and tomatoes, canned meat, cheese and cleaning supplies.
ACN is monitoring the situation closely before deciding on despatching more aid.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, 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 Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 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, 45 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, please contact the Sydney office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148 ABN: 62 418 911 594
Ph/Fax (02) 9679-1929 e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org web: www.aidtochurch.org