Aid to the Church in Need: Africa: Never despair - the Pope's trip to Africa and the work of ACN

Africa: Never despair - the Pope's trip to Africa and the work of ACN

Posted by Press release on 19/3/2009, 8:58 am
Board Administrator

ACN News: Thursday, 18th March 2009 –

Africa – Never despair

ACN assesses project priorities as Pope sets out for Africa

By John Pontifex

AS Pope Benedict XVI embarks on his first trip to Africa, a leading Catholic charity has underlined its commitment to promoting Gospel values, saying that the Church’s role is critical in the continent’s desperate search for peace.
Aid to the Church in Need’s project support has grown more in Africa than almost every other continent – especially over the past three years – as the charity responds to a vocations boom and growing numbers of Catholics.
With increasing demand on ACN’s resources, the charity’s project work is concentrating on education in Christianity as well as religious and human formation for clergy and lay – which the charity believes are crucial in the bid to break the cycle of violence and other forms of conflict.
ACN projects director Regina Lynch said: “The Church in Africa – with growing numbers of priests and a more committed laity – is undoubtedly the best hope for a continent that for some people represents nothing but injustice, bloodshed and despair.”
Her comments come as the Pope travels to Angola and Cameroon in a landmark trip in which the Pontiff is expected to set out his vision for the Church in Africa – especially in the context of worsening conflict.
The latest audited figures revealed that annually ACN has paid out €443,600 ($874,000) for Angola and €553,000 ($1,088,000) for Cameroon – just part of a total pay-out of over €14 million ($27.5 million) for the whole of Africa.
Miss Lynch said ACN’s priority for Africa comes amid reports of renewed growth in the Church there – a sign of hope in a continent where fundamentalism, poverty and famine have worsened.
It comes after Vatican statistics out earlier this month showed that vocations to the priesthood in Africa had increased the most – a rise of 27.6 percent over the course of 2007.

(Regina Lynch - ACN Director of Projetcs)

Miss Lynch said that ACN had responded to the vocations growth by increasing its commitment to helping both seminarians and religious Sisters.
She added: “Support for vocations is crucial – especially at this time of growth in numbers – but for ACN it is not only a question of quantity but of quality and we are working with religious superiors in vocations discernment and formation.”
Miss Lynch went on to emphasise ACN’s work with lay people – promoting Christian family values, AIDS prevention and other pro-life initiatives.
She said: “ACN’s increasing work in Africa is a response to the amount of life and energy in the Church – its struggle to rebuild respect for human dignity, develop paths towards reconciliation and give young people a chance for a better life.”
She went on to say that inculcating Christian values such as love and forgiveness from an early age is critical, emphasising ACN’s Child Bible which has now been distributed across 46 African countries in 64 different languages.
Reconciliation initiatives, Miss Lynch said, are key, underlining ACN’s support for the Marian shrine in Kibeho, Rwanda, a project seen as helping the country to heal the wounds of civil conflict.
She went on to underline the charity’s help in parts of the continent affected by the spread of Islam – especially in countries such as Sudan – emphasising projects such as the Save the Savable schools for displaced children in Khartoum.
Miss Lynch said: “Sadly, fundamentalism is reaching deep into the continent and in some countries the future of Christianity is on a knife-edge.
“Violence, poverty and extremism in regions such as eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Sudan have fundamentally assaulted the dignity of the human person – their values, their sense of right and wrong, their sense of community and their trust in God. If these scars are to heal, the Church needs our support.”

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