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GERMANY: Statue to honour Aid to the Church in Need founder
By John Newton
Father Werenfried, the 'Bacon Priest' and founder of Aid to the Church in Need, holding a pig
Plans are afoot to honour the founder of Aid to the Church in Need with a statue in the town where he set up the international Catholic charity.
To mark the 100th anniversary of Father Werenfried van Straaten’s birth in 2013, a seven-and-a-half foot high bronze statue of the priest is to be erected in Königstein, near Frankfurt, Germany.
Father Werenfried, a Dutch Norbertine priest, founded Aid to the Church in Need in 1947 to help 14 million refugees fleeing the Eastern territories under Communist control.
He will be portrayed alongside Bishops Maximilian Kaller and Adolf Kindermann, who also helped care for refugees in post-war Germany.
The statue will be located in Pater-Werenfried-Platz – Father Werenfried Plaza – the large square on one side of which is located the international headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need.
In preparation for the memorial, the plaza underwent extensive renovation work earlier this year, when the charity’s circular red logo was incorporated into the paving.
During a short ceremony to commemorate the square’s reopening on 19th August, Königstein’s mayor, Leonhard Helm, paid tribute to Father Werenfried, saying: “Königstein is proud of this man.”
Father Werenfried Plaza was where, in the 1950s, Father Werenfried oversaw the blessing of the ‘Chapel Trucks’ – converted buses with a built-in altar for celebrating open-air Masses.
Some 35 Chapel Trucks were sent out, carrying priests to scattered groups of German refugees in areas where churches did not exist or had been destroyed.
The Chapel Trucks launched Aid to the Church in Need’s Vehicles for God campaign. It provided transport to enable priests and religious to reach the faithful in places where there was no pastoral provision.
Between 1994 and 2009 no fewer than 6,352 cars, and more than 1,000 motorcycles, 80 motorboats and 6,650 bicycles were supplied by the charity to support the Church’s pastoral outreach.
This included a car for Bishop José Slaby, the Apostolic Prelature of Escuel, in Argentinian Patagonia, who looks after 65,000 people in an area measuring more than 30,500 square miles.
Shortly before Father Werenfried’s death in 2003 he was granted the freedom of Königstein for his work helping suffering and persecuted Christians.
The renovation of Father Werenfried Plaza, which was re-named in honour of Aid to the Church in Need’s founder in 2005, was funded by grants from the state of Hessen and the federal German government.