Aid to the Church in Need: Africa: ACN calls for more help for families

Africa: ACN calls for more help for families

Posted by ACN News on 9/12/2008, 1:57 pm
Board Administrator

Africa: ACN calls for more help for families

by Eva Maria Kolmann

On her return from a fact-finding trip to Africa, Christine du Coudray, who heads the Africa desk of the international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) in Germany, has appealed to the industrial nations to do more for the family and for the protection of human life in Africa.

Miss du Coudray laments the fact that ACN seems to be almost alone in its efforts to promote the "Culture of Life" on this continent. Many agencies working in Africa promote a Western concept of the family that is no longer based on the community of husband, wife and children, instead promoting artificial contraception and abortion, and offering condoms as a solution to the spread of AIDS, she says, adding, "The Africans see these ideas as foreign. They understand at once that this is no culture of life but rather a culture of death."

In November this year (16 - 22) Miss du Coudray attended the congress of the „Africa Family Life Federation“ (AFLF) in Nairobi, together with the secretary general of ACN, Mr Pierre-Marie Morel. This congress, she reports, has shown the high level of expertise with which African experts from the widest range of disciplines are working for the promotion of healthy families. The 100 participants from 17 different African countries included specialists from a range of different medical fields, together with theologians, priests, religious sisters and lay specialists active in the pastoral apostolate. She believes that this foundation, which has been supported by ACN since it was first set up eight years ago, has the capacity to combine the various different forces and specialist disciplines and thereby achieve something in areas where individual groups are unable to do so.

The work of the AFLF rests on two pillars, according to Miss du Coudray. The first is a wide-ranging outreach to families; the second consists in helping married couples in the practicalities of everyday life, with particular emphasis on natural family planning. The important thing, she emphasises, is to promote the training of those who will later train others. "We can never do enough to encourage this important and valuable cause", she adds.

With the help of ACN, the AFLF will shortly be producing a handbook on Christian family life, which will be used in the family apostolate in numerous African countries. Says Christine du Coudray: "I believe there is nothing more important than to focus on the family. For it is the basis for everything else -- for a healthy and stable society, for priestly vocations and for the future of mankind altogether." She believes that Africa can show the West that the future of mankind lies with the family and that the African continent has "a special calling" in this regard.

The international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) ranks the protection of human life and of the family among its most important priorities. Right up to the end of his life in 2003, the founder of the charity, Father Werenfried van Straaten had repeatedly and insistently urged for an end to the killing of unborn life. And to this day ACN supports numerous initiatives for the protection of innocent life and for the safeguarding of the family. Equally, and especially in Africa, ACN supports AIDS prevention strategies that set out to encourage chastity outside marriage and fidelity within it, especially among young people.

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 Australian 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