Aid to the Church in Need: Catholic charity visits Colombia’s Choco region

Catholic charity visits Colombia’s Choco region

Posted by Press Release on 19/11/2008, 8:32 am
Board Administrator

ACN News, Wednesday, 19th November 2008 – COLOMBIA

Mission impossible? Not any more!
ACN reaches out to remote corner of stricken Colombia

By John Pontifex

A LEADING Catholic charity is poised to step up help for Christians in a forgotten corner of the world after staff finally pulled off a visit to one of Latin America’s most dangerous countries.
Projects chiefs from Aid to the Church in Need first hatched plans to visit Colombia’s Choco region four years ago but safety concerns in a country notorious for kidnapping, gun crime and drug trafficking repeatedly meant the trips had to be aborted.

Finally, late last month, ACN Latin American expert Xavier Legorreta finally got the security breakthrough he needed and the visit went ahead.

He has since returned with dozens of project requests from a region of Colombia along the Pacific coast bedevilled not only by security concerns but by massive poverty, extreme humidity and heat as well as poor communications.
Bishops Mr Legorreta visited were at last able to present to him requests for Mass stipends for poor and remote priests, churches and chapels in need of repairs and Child’s Bibles and posters for young people to learn about Christianity.

Xavier Legorreta in Choco

But stressing the risks involved, Mr Legorreta said it was his “most dangerous trip” in 14 years at ACN and told how he travelled around complete with police protection and bodyguards.

With air travel considered less risky, Mr Legorreta made 13 flights across Choco in as many days.
He said: “The bishops were so glad to see us. They are simple missionaries who depend on ACN and other charities to help the Church to grow. They turn to us because they know they can rely on us to provide them with what they need to help offer Christ to people who suffer so much.”
Most people living in the Pacific region of Choco are Afro-Americans, descendants of slaves brought over to Colombia by Spanish colonialists and who have felt cut off from the rest of the country because of the geographical, cultural and racial differences.

Quoting statistics giving a jobless total of 60 percent in the region, Mr Legorreta said: “There are huge problems for these people. Drug trafficking is very common and guerrilla fighters make life very difficult.”
But the political and social situation is at last improving with incidents of kidnapping having plummeted from a high of more 3,500 in 2000 to barely 500 last year, a sign of success in Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s struggle against the FARC guerrilla rebels.

For the Church in Choco, a key sign of hope is coming from elsewhere in Colombia where Catholicism is thriving.
There are more than 1,000 seminarians across a Catholic country of 46 million – with more than 400 seminarians in the capital, Bogota, alone.
He said: “There’s a lot of solidarity between the dioceses I visited and the others. The Catholic community really want to come and help.”
Among the ACN projects Mr Legorreta visited was the rebuilt church in the town of Bayavista in the Quebdo diocese, which was bombed in 2002, apparently by mistake.
Mr Legorreta said: “Outside the church, there is a ‘Thank you ACN’ plaque. The church is a symbol of the need for reconciliation and healing after a period of great suffering.”

Colombia is a priority country for Aid to the Church in Need. Last year, the charity provided more than $2.3 million to help the suffering Church there.

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