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 …
Continue reading “Venezuela marks 140 years of the first Lourdes pilgrimage in the Americas”
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 …
Continue reading “José Si Esono, the catechist who gave his life for the faith”
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 …
Continue reading “Iraq – ACN helps Catholic school build a new kindergarten”
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 …
Continue reading “Brazil: Sowing the seeds of the Gospel in the Amazon”
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 …
Continue reading “Venezuela – “The people are hungry for God.””
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 …
Continue reading “Mexico: “We should … not get accustomed to the violence””
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. …
Continue reading “Democratic Republic of the Congo – A priest at the service of inmates”
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 …
