Aid to the Church in Need: Happy Birthday to “God’s Beggar”

Happy Birthday to “God’s Beggar”

Posted by Press Release on 22/1/2003, 7:42 am
Message modified by board administrator 22/1/2003, 12:01 am

Happy Birthday to “God’s Beggar”
The man who spearheaded a huge relief operation to bring the light of faith to Christians amid the darkness of oppression
By John Pontifex, Head of Press and Information for Aid to the Church in Need.
HE is a man whose religious zeal combined with a tender compassion for the suffering to make him a virtual legend in the Catholic Church.
Christians in need have reaped a harvest sown by the priest who has raised vast sums for the persecuted Church – be it in Eastern Europe, Sudan or Haiti.
Not only did Father Werenfried van Straaten found a charity beloved of John Paul II but the monk’s sheer determination and charisma helped his organisation to become a truly international force providing Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
JOHN PONTIFEX, from Aid to the Church in Need, marks the 90th birthday of Father Werenfried by charting a life that begun in a monastic cloister and ended up with him winning worldwide recognition as an “apostle of peace”.

THE cathedral was standing room only.
In an age of empty pews in a part of the world suspicious of religious faith, people had come from far and wide to thank God for this man whose convictions shaped everything that he had become.
Tribute after tribute was read out – presidents, chairmen, cardinals and archbishops – all had nothing but praise for this man of God.
Germany’s Limburg Cathedral was rapt in concentration as 700 people heard about a priest variously described as “Fighter for Peace”, “International Bridge Builder”, a man who Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy, called a “preacher and prophet”.
The service, on Friday (17 January), was a far cry from the difficult days when Father Werenfried founded his charity.

THE Germany of 1945 was a desolate land. Defeated and despised, its people faced a bleak future.
But their problems paled into insignificance compared with those of refugees displaced in the land carve up agreed by the victorious powers when they shared out the spoils of war.
They made a desperate appeal to the Church for help.
The Vatican responded by calling on Catholics everywhere to drum up support. One such establishment Belgium’s Tongerlo Abbey, the home of Father Werenfried van Straaten.
In a Christmas letter to supporters of Tongerlo Abbey, Fr Werenfried appealed for help.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph were the first refugees of the Christian age,” he was to write. “Since that time, the world has been filled with the homeless, the persecuted and the refugees in whom Christ pleads with us for love and support.”
The task before him was far from easy. Not only were the victors of war scarcely less impoverished than the losers, but Fr Werenfried had to ask people to set aside age-old resentment towards the Germans, now more bitter than ever.
Sheer determination was to win through for Fr Werenfried as he literally took to the road to raise funds – even standing outside factory gates in the hope of donations from workers having their lunch hour.
FOR all his unshakable confidence in God, nothing could have prepared Father Werenfried for the extraordinary scale of his success.
The people to whom he had turned for help had virtually nothing and yet out of the bounty of their generosity came a staggering amount of aid to the Church in Need.
Jewellery glittered among the stockpile of gifts which included everything from basic clothing to huge hunks of meat.
In fact, so much meat did Fr Werenfried collect that he soon earned the nickname: “Bacon Priest”.
So much did the name stick with him that at his birthday celebrations in Limburg last week, a pig was brought out – much to the delight of Father Werenfried.
Early on in his charity work, Father Werenfried slipped behind the Iron Curtain aided and abetted – so legend has it – by a disguise perfected by a moustache.
What he found appalled him. He spoke of people “wasting away” – young and old alike. The ever-watchful eye of a regime that knew no mercy reeked a level of suffering that teetered on the brink of despair.
Father Werenfried’s instincts were to remain the same throughout his life – to do everything in his power to encourage those who have plenty to respond to the needs of those who have nothing.
Back home, he confronted people with a message that pulled no punches:
”Should we not be troubled by the gruesome fact that millions of people must live through the darkest hours of their lives without experiencing the love of God because millions of others…remain hard-hearted and indifferent?”

SUCH hard-hitting words stirred the consciences of the faithful to such an extent that Father Werenfried and his charity soon attracted the attention of the Pope.
It was at the request of Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) that Aid to the Church in Need started work in Latin America in the 1960s, the same decade that ACN began to help the people of Africa.
The charity’s rising profile kept pace with its ever-increasing expansion. ACN’s growth reached an important milestone in the early 1990s when Pope John Paul II urged Catholic support for beleaguered Orthodox Christians emerging from the long night of Soviet oppression.
Aid to the Church in Need is now at work in 140 countries world-wide.
Father Werenfried’s charity now provides financial and practical support for seminarians, priests, sisters and lay people everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Since 1979, when the initiative began, almost 40 million ACN Child’s Bibles have been distributed across the globe.
FATHER Werenfried is now old and frail. Friday’s long service was really quite a challenge for him.
And yet even then nothing would deflect him from the task he has made his own for so long. As the tributes poured in, his reaction was to point to the hat in which he had collected donations generation after generation.
The gesture was a pointed reminder that the charity’s aim must remain one and the same – to put the Church in Need first at all times.
His verdict on himself is perhaps the best: “The gift that God has given me – to move others to deeds of Christian love and charity – will be of little use to me before the judgement seat of God, because I myself am not made better by this gift.
“For I am not the light, but only the lamp stand, designed to hold up the light so that others can find their way to God.”
Photo: ACN founder Fr Werenfried van Straaten, nicknamed the "Bacon Priest", celebrates his birthday with a pig.

This message is locked.

Responses are not allowed!

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