Aid to the Church in Need: Chile: More than just a house... Building a home for Christ

Chile: More than just a house... Building a home for Christ

Posted by Information Report on 20/10/2009, 1:23 pm
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More than just a house... Building a home for Christ

Fr Josse van der Rest meets Fr Werenfried van Straaten

Both men are master builders, architects – of new houses and of a better world. They are Werenfried van Straaten and Josse van der Rest. One is a Dutchman, the other a Belgian. From the late 40s and early 50s they were active first of all in their own countries, then later far beyond these boundaries. Both men built things, had things made, solved problems, overcame barriers... and were always unbureaucratic and direct.

Both are religious, both priests. Van Straaten, born in 1913, joined the Norbertine Order, founded in 1120 by Norbert of Xanten in the French town of Prémontré. Van der Rest, born in 1924, is a Jesuit. Both men considered as forceful characters, energetic and charismatic, unafraid of conflict, brooking no resistance, ruffling feathers, influencing others, visionary and innovative in their approach.

Both men gathered millions in donations, and what is more, each man had a high mutual regard for the other and visited the other regularly. "He is the Jesuit with the biggest heart that I have ever come across" wrote Father Werenfried about van der Rest. "He was a fantastic man", said Father van der Rest of Father Werenfried, who died in 2003. The two men had met for the last time a year before his death.

Fr van der Rest meeting with Fr Werenfried in 1988 at the HQ's of ACN in Germany

Father Werenfried, the older of the two, founded his Building Companions, among other things, in 1953. Its goal was to motivate young people from Germany and other countries to help build homes, churches and chapels for the refugees and uprooted Germans from the East. At the same time he collected donations of food and money for the defeated – and still hated – Germans among their former enemies in postwar Europe, soon earning himself the affectionate nickname of "Bacon priest" in recognition. He built churches, adapted transport vehicles to create "chapel trucks", funded motorcycles and later small cars for the so-called "rucksack priests" who travelled the country ministering to the isolated Catholic refugees.

All these initiatives merged to become the organisation “Ostpriesterhilfe”, (in English, Iron Curtain Church Relief) or since 1969, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) (www.acn-intl.org), today a worldwide Catholic pastoral charity of pontifical right (i.e. answerable to Rome alone). To this day Father Werenfried's organisation has one overriding objective, namely to strengthen the Church's pastoral mission worldwide. Still today his founding principle holds good: that an authentic pastoral outreach will promote true Christian faith and thereby motivate many to show an active charity by helping others in material and spiritual need.

Right from the start, Father Werenfried's initiative has sought to sustain persecuted Catholics in their need. During the postwar era the charity was especially committed to helping those in Eastern Europe facing discrimination and persecution for their Faith. Today this same commitment extends to persecuted Christians around the world. However, ACN seeks not only to help the oppressed but also to promote reconciliation between the different faiths and religions. To cite one example, the fact that Catholics and Orthodox have drawn closer together again in the last couple of decades, following centuries of isolation, is due not least to Father Werenfried's commitment on behalf of the Orthodox Churches.

Millions have likewise been raised by Josse van der Rest, the younger of these two master builders. Since the late 1950s he has been the inspiration for the “Hogar de Cristo” initiative in Chile (www.hogardecristo.cl) as its pastor. This work of humanitarian charity, founded in 1944 by the Chilean Jesuit Father Alberto Hurtado, has helped millions of homeless people over the past decades, quite literally, to get a "roof over their heads". Josse van der Rest has been the leading figure in this initiative ever since the early death from cancer of Father Hurtado in 1952.

(Fr Josse van der Rest (SJ), from the Fondation "Hogar de Cristo", during his visit to ACN in 2009. Here he shows a
model of the emergency housings, which he builts for poor people in Chile and Latin America)

In 1962 Werenfried van Straaten was able to witness for himself the commitment of his brother priest, during a visit to Chile. In his book "Where God weeps", he gives the following description: "His speciality is the manufacture of emergency housing, according to a procedure he has invented himself. On iron feet, firmly anchored in the ground, steel frames are set, into which the beams and boards for the roof and walls are fixed. The doors and windows are simply cut out. Everything fits together. Young lads saw everything to length and hammer the roof and walls effortlessly together. They make dozens of houses each day".

Van der Rest, himself of noble stock, designs and builds only the simplest of houses, but he also makes quite sure that they can actually be erected and used. His usual procedure goes like this: together with thousands of homeless people, he moves overnight to occupy land that has already been earmarked for development – i.e. land that already has at least electric power and running water available. Then they immediately erect the simple, prefabricated houses. As a result of this highly unconventional approach, this Jesuit priest rapidly hit the headlines.

Needless to say, his methods have met with opposition from landowners and officials, and many of his religious superiors are far from convinced about the correctness of his approach. But Father van der Rest, who has been sent to prison several times, always justifies his approach on the basis of the need of those entrusted to his care, and this has ultimately won him respect. Today Hogar de Cristo is one of the most respected social initiatives in Chile.

(Chile: The foundation 'Hogar de Cristo' hopes to help people living in appalling conditions as depicted in the above picture)

But van der Rest has also thought well beyond his own national frontiers. In 1971 this feisty Jesuit founded "Selavip" – Servicio lationamericano, africano y asiático de vivienda popluar (www.selavip.org). This is a common sort of housing association that promotes the building of simple housing for the needy not only in Latin America but also in Africa and Asia. The international headquarters of the foundation, which has so far provided housing to around 5.6 million homeless people in 42 countries, are situated in Brussels. Selavip does not build houses itself, but funds the projects of its chosen partners. To date 80 such projects have been realised, 49 of them in Asia alone. The money is raised through donations and interest on legacies.

Whereas Hogar de Cristo and Selavip fund individual house building programmes, ACN supplies extensive funding for pastoral construction projects, including churches, chapels, convents, seminaries, parish centres and training centres. Although Werenfried van Straaten and Josse van der Rest have chosen different routes in the service of charity, both men have at least two things in common – the conviction that people are much better than we think, and a profound trust in the Word of God, which for a vast number of people has indeed been fulfilled through the life and work of these two outstanding priests and founding fathers.

To help this cause 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