Women: a crucial support in Ukraine On International Women’s Day, international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) highlights all the brave wives, sisters, mothers, and religious who are helping keep faith and hope alive in war-torn Ukraine. The war in Ukraine is not only an assault on an independent nation, struggling to …
Category archives: Feature story
Argentinian Patagonia: mission country
The Church in Patagonia faces unique challenges marked by vast distances, great diversity, and a lack of resources. One of the bishops in charge of overseeing the development of the Church in this vast territory of Argentina is Msgr. Roberto Álvarez, who sat down with Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to share his …
Venezuela marks 140 years of the first Lourdes pilgrimage in the Americas
The pilgrimage was instituted in 1884 by Fr. Machado, the Venezuelan priest in the Diocese of La Guaira, after returning from a trip to the famous shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes in France. Tony Pereira, a lay member of the current organizing committee, spoke to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) about the …
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José Si Esono, the catechist who gave his life for the faith
Central Africa – Equatorial Guinea During a visit to the head office of Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Bishop Miguel Angel Nguema Bee, from the Diocese of Ebebiyin, recounted the moving story of the first catechist to be martyred in Equatorial Guinea. His name was José Si Esono and the local …
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Iraq – ACN helps Catholic school build a new kindergarten
Thanks to the generosity of Aid to the Church in Need’s benefactors, a growing Catholic school in Erbil was able to open a new kindergarten to accommodate the increasing number of children. Education is vital for the survival of Iraq’s long-suffering Christian community. Economic deprivation and unemployment are at present the biggest issues facing Christians …
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Brazil: Sowing the seeds of the Gospel in the Amazon
By evangelizing and helping the Ticuna Indigenous people, the Capuchin friars, with support from Aid to the Church in Need, are helping to preserve the Amazon rainforest. “I have never left this place, I know nothing of the world, but I believe in God. He gives me eternal life. I called the friars here to …
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Venezuela – “The people are hungry for God.”
Ten years after its creation, a neighbourhood named after Hugo Chávez finally has a parish church. Ciudad Chávez is a neighbourhood in the Venezuelan city of Vargas, in La Guaira Diocese, just a few kilometres away from Maiquetía (Simón Bolívar) International Airport. The neighbourhood was built in 2013, as part of the social program of …
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Mexico: “We should … not get accustomed to the violence”
Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is supporting the Mexican Church in its peacebuilding efforts. ACN, Mexico City/Königstein/Montreal – Mexico is considered one of the most violent and dangerous countries in the world. According to a report on criminality by the country’s National Citizen Observatory, there were 15,560 victims of intentional homicide in the …
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Democratic Republic of the Congo – A priest at the service of inmates
In the extreme conditions of the Congolese prison system, a priest is struggling to protect inmates from hunger and despair. Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reports from the central prison in Bukavu, in the far east of the country (South Kivu region) on the work of the Church among these otherwise abandoned people. …
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Sister Selestina : ‘‘If they built a convent on Mars, we’d willingly go there to live and work.”
Feature Story – Iceland Nominally, the vast majority of Icelanders belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland. There are only around 14,000 Catholics in Iceland, a country with only one diocese – Reykjavik – and eight parishes. Some of these parishes are very distant from each other. None of this bothers Sister Selestina Gavric …