INTERNATIONAL: April aid payments focus on Eastern Europe
By John Newton
Bishop Kiro Stojanov of Skopje (right) and Monsignor Antun Cirimotic, from Macedonia
Aid to the Church in Need is providing valuable support for groundbreaking initiatives to support poverty-stricken Catholics in a forgotten corner of Eastern Europe – and the charity is sending help to other Christians around the world in the latest round of aid payments.
Aid to the Church in Need’s UK office in Sutton, Surrey, is providing help for a new pastoral centre in the Macedonian capital, Skopje. The centre is seen as an important tool for outreach to the nearby Christian community.
Amid reports that one third of people in Macedonia are unemployed, the Macedonian Church turned to Aid to the Church in Need, which is contributing £6,900 for the pastoral centre.
The grant to revamp and equip the pastoral centre is one of a string of aid payments for key projects in Eastern Europe made by Aid to the Church in Need’s UK office this month.
The building is under threat from damp, and new heating is urgently required in a country where winters can reach temperatures of -15C.
Further support for Macedonia comes in the shape of a £3,450 grant to renovate a priest’s house badly in need of repairs, again in Skopje.
Monsignor Antun Cirimotic, director of the pastoral centre, which was built in 1983, told Aid to the Church in Need it needed a lot of work to make it fit for mission.
He said: “For 26 years now there has been absolutely no renovation work done on the house.”
The Macedonian Church is active in social work throughout the country, running soup kitchens, orphanages and hospitals.
Bishop Kiro Stojanov of Skopje said: “People respect us. Being widely scattered, we are visible everywhere. We have many vocations, even though we are a small Church.”
The Church has many challenges in a country where just 18 priests serve 20,000 Catholics in a total population of two million.
In neighbouring Albania, meanwhile, Aid to the Church in Need is providing £3,450 to help rebuild a pastoral centre in Shkodre diocese.
The new centre will be an important step forward for the Church in Albania, which is continuing to grow following the collapse of communism, although it has not yet received back all the property seized by the former communist government.
Aid to the Church in Need is also giving subsistence aid to Redemptorist Sisters in Slovakia and Basilian Sisters in Romania to help them continue their important work.
Training and supporting vocations continue to be priorities for the charity, and there is help for the formation of novices and other Sisters in the Carmelites of Child Jesus and the Congregation of the Sisters of the Angels in Poland.
Aid to the Church in Need UK has also supported two new chapels and a presbytery in Ethiopia.
Assistance was given to missionaries in Bolivia, and there was help for a new church in Vijaygiri, India.