ACN delegation will visit Erbil – with a letter and gifts from the Pope

  • Written by:

ACN delegation will visit Erbil – with a letter and gifts from the Pope
Posted by ACN News on
By Marta Petrosillo
From 1st to 4th April this year a delegation from the Italian office of the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) will visit the city of Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Pope Francis wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to entrust some liturgical vestments, together with a personal financial donation, to the Bishop of Carpi, Monsignor Francesco Cavina, who will be part of the delegation led by Alessandro Monteduro, the director of ACN Italy, together with Bishop Antonio Suetta of Ventimiglia-San Remo and Don Massimo Fabbri, representing the archdiocese of Bologna.

“Just as soon as the Holy Father learned of this visit of mine with ACN, he telephoned me expressing his desire to send a gift to our Iraqi brethren in the faith”, Bishop Cavina relates.
The Pope has also given a letter to Bishop Cavina in which he praises the visit organised by ACN as an “initiative that expresses friendship, ecclesial communion and close fellowship with so many of our brothers and sisters, whose situation of affliction and tribulation grieves me deeply and calls out to us to defend the inalienable right of every person to freely profess his own faith.”

The Pope calls for us “not to forget the drama of persecution” and notes how “the patient and courageous witness of faith on the part of so many disciples of Christ represents a call for the whole Church to rediscover the fertile wellsprings of the Paschal Mystery, from which we can draw energy, strength and light for a new humanism”.

“Mercy”, the Holy Father continues, “calls on us to bend over these brothers and sisters of ours, to dry their tears, heal their physical and moral wounds, and console their grief-stricken and damaged hearts. It is not a matter of a mere dutiful act of charity but of helping our very own hearts, since all Christians, in virtue of the same baptism, are “one” in Christ.”

In Kurdistan the delegation will meet with Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Matti Warda of Erbil, and with him will visit the refugee centres in the mainly Christian suburb of Ankawa. Here they will also visit the Father Werenfried Village, named after the founder of ACN, Father Werenfried van Straaten, which is a settlement of 150 prefabricated homes donated by ACN, and now home to 175 Christian families. The visit will also take in the schools – also in prefabricated buildings donated by ACN – in which some 7000 Iraqi children are today able to continue their studies. In the following days the delegation will also meet with Syrian Catholic Bishop Petros Mouche of Mosul, who has now been forced to live in Erbil together with his Catholic faithful, ever since the city was overrun by the fighters of IS.

(Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil (northern Iraq), Bashar Matti Warda © Aid to the Church in Need)

“Right from the very start ACN has supported the Christian refugees in Iraqi Kurdistan”, recalls Alessandro Monteduro, the director of ACN Italy. “We have donated food, homes and schools, so that they could live in dignity. To say nothing of the support for their pastoral work, so that the Christians there can continue to fully live their faith. It is a faith which they have courageously refused to renounce, even at the cost of their own lives.”

From June 2014 to the present day ACN has given over $22.5 million to help the Iraqi Christians.

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.
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, Aid to the Church in Need’s Child’s Bible – God Speaks to his Children has been translated into 172 languages and 50 million copies have been distributed all over the world.
While ACN gives full permission for the media to freely make use of the charity’s press releases, please acknowledge ACN as the source of stories when using the material.

For more information or to make a donation to help the work of Aid to the Church in Need, 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 7246 Baulkham Hills NSW 2153.

On Line donations can be made at www.aidtochurch.org

http://members4.boardhost.com/acnaus/msg/1458781668.html