Aid to the Church in Need: Holy Land: Supporting those who are suffering in the Gaza Strip

Holy Land: Supporting those who are suffering in the Gaza Strip

Posted by Press release on 13/1/2009, 10:36 am
Board Administrator

ACN News, Tuesday, 13th January 2009 – HOLY LAND

Supporting those who are suffering

By John Pontifex

EMERGENCY aid totalling almost $40,000 is being despatched by the charity Aid to the Church in Need to help disaster-stricken people in the Gaza Strip.
Administered by Church authorities in the region, the aid will target some of those worst affected in a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the ongoing violence which began over two weeks ago.
Announcing the emergency funding, Pierre-Marie Morel, ACN International General Secretary, appealed for prayer.
Calling on ACN’s 700,000 benefactors around the world to pray for peace, Mr Morel said: “We know that our financial support can do no more than ease the worst of the need.”
He added: “The bombs and grenades in Gaza make no distinction between peaceful Christian civilians and warring Hamas supporters.”
Speaking by telephone to Aid to the Church in Need project staff, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal underlined the gravity of the humanitarian problems in Gaza and the shock of the violence, coming unexpectedly so soon after Christmas.
Concerns about supplies of basic food, water and shelter mounted after it took 10 days for a truce to be called to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Key to the distribution of the ACN aid will be Monsignor Manuel Musallam, parish priest of Holy Family parish, in Gaza City, who last week spoke on the telephone to the charity describing the people’s suffering.
At the time, Mgr Mussallam said: “The people are weeping – men, women and children are weeping. They are desperate to find ways to feed themselves, how to ensure their protection.”
In a massively overpopulated region of 1.5 million people – more than half of them children – there are only 5,000 Christians. About 300 of them are Catholic (Latin Rite) and the vast majority are Greek Orthodox.
Aid to the Church in Need, which helps persecuted and other suffering Christians, has stepped up support for the Church in the Middle East after Pope Benedict XVI told the charity of his concern that some of the region’s Christian communities “are threatened in their very existence”.

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