Aid to the Church in Need Annual Mass and Westminster Event: Standing Together in Faith
Bishop Hlib Lonchyna, Peter Sefton-Williams (chairman of the charity's board of trustees), Neville Kyrke-Smith, Bishop Joseph Coutts and Archbishop Vincent Nichols
17 October 2009 10:30
Westminster Cathedral
Ambrosden Avenue
London
SW1P 1QW
Almost four hundred Aid to the Church in Need benefactors were at the annual Westminster Event to hear messages of thanks and inspiration from the suffering Church.
You can read a full report about the Westminster event, or listen to the talks from the day using the audio files on this page.
The event was opened by Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, who led the Angelus and made a short speech in support of Aid to the Church in Need’s work helping persecuted and suffering Christians.
Listen to the Angelus, led by Archbishop Vincent Nichols
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Listen to Archbishop Vincent Nichols’s speech about Aid to the Church in Need’s work
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Aid to the Church in Need’s Ecclesiastical Assistant, Father Martin Edwards, offered some meditations on the Year for Priests and the Pope’s encyclical, Caritas in Veritate.
Listen to Father Martin Edwards’s meditations on the Year for Priests
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Keynote speaker Bishop Joseph Coutts of Faisalabad, Pakistan, who celebrated the 10.30am Mass in Westminster Cathedral before the event, then told the audience: “We feel very encouraged when we know that we are not alone, when we see that there is somebody behind us, helping us, praying for us.”
Christians in Pakistan have recently suffered some of the worst persecution in the country’s history.
Listen to Bishop Joseph Coutts’s talk about Christians in Pakistan
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Listen to a question and answer session with Bishop Joseph Coutts of Faisalabad, Pakistan
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After lunch, Regina Lynch, Aid to the Church in Need’s Director of Projects, told listeners about the charity’s project prioirities, focussing on key countries including China, where she has travelled extensively.
Listen to Regina Lynch’s talk on Aid to the Church in Need’s projects
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John Pontifex, Aid to the Church in Need UK’s Head of Press and Information then reported back on his recent trip to Sudan, where Christians face persecution in their daily lives, and where the threat of civil war still hangs over the people.
Listen to John Pontifex’s talk on the Church in Sudan
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Eastern Europe and Russia were in the spotlight at the event, first when Bishop Hlib Lonchyna, the Apostolic Administrator of the Apostolic Exarchate of Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Great Britain, read out a message of thanks to Aid to the Church in Need written by Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
And then Neville Kyrke-Smith, UK National Director of Aid to the Church in Need, spoke about the charity’s support for Christians in the former communist lands of Eastern Europe and Russia.
Listen to Bishop Hlib Lonchyna’s message on behalf of Cardinal Lubomyr Husar
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Listen to Neville Kyrke-Smith’s talk on Eastern Europe and Russia
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There was time for questions and answers at the end of the event, before Mr Kyrke-Smith brought the event to a close and Father Edwards led the audience in the Salve Regina. Bishop Coutts closed the event with a blessing.
Listen to questions and answers from the 2009 Westminster Event
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Listen to Neville Kyrke-Smith’s concluding statement
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Listen to the Salve Regina
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Tagged with
- Archdiocese of Westminster
- China
- Information
- Mass
- Our Lady
- Pakistan
- Prayer
- Priests
- Russia
- South East
- Sudan
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom