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UNITED KINGDOM/INTERNATIONAL: Tidings of comfort as Christmas aid is unveiled

By John Pontifex

Christians in Haiti carrying a tabernacle to safety after the January 2010 earthquake

Christians in Haiti carrying a tabernacle to safety after the January 2010 earthquake

21 December 2010

Help for Haiti tops the list of grants announced this Christmas by Aid to the Church in Need in the UK.

From its national office in Sutton, Surrey, the charity has just paid out 18 aid packages for distribution in dioceses throughout the island, which was decimated by January’s earthquake.

The grants for this month include:

  • solar panels for a parish in Haiti
  • repairs to a school for prospective seminarians in Cap-Haïtien
  • a new roof for St Joseph’s Church in Port-de-Paix
  • Mass stipends for priests in the capital Port-au-Prince, Jérémie, Jacmel, Les Gonaïves and Fort-Liberté

The largest grants for Haiti include £68,000 to help 270 students for the priesthood who are urgently in need of help.

Their seminary buildings were destroyed by the quake, forcing them to use tents instead.

A further £42,000 has gone towards repairs to a religious Sisters’ convent, which is temporarily home to more than 50 Sisters after the congregation lost most of its houses in Port-au-Prince.

The suffering Church in Pakistan – one of Aid to the Church in Need’s principal campaign focuses for 2010 – receives five aid packages including a £21,000 scheme for a boy’s hostel in Hyderabad diocese, Sindh Province, and a multi-purpose community centre in Yohannabad, outside Lahore.

Christ the King Seminary in Karachi received grants for library books and new air conditioning units – of vital importance in a hot region where electricity is rationed. Up to 40 students are studying theology in the final stage of their preparations for priesthood here.

Turning to Iraq, where Aid to the Church in Need recently announced emergency aid packages for Christians fleeing persecution, the Sutton office paid out £16,750 for seminarians from the Syrian Catholic archdiocese of Mosul – which has fallen victim to some of the country’s worst anti-Christian violence.

The charity gave a similar-sized aid package to a seminary in Grodno, Belarus, a country experiencing an upsurge in political tension.

In total 18 countries received aid from Aid to the Church in Need’s UK office this month.

These included China, where there were grants providing religious formation. Also receiving help in China were some priests who have been given Mass stipends.

More Mass stipends were provided for priests in Kenya, Tanzania, Peru, Argentina, Nicaragua, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic.

Announcing Aid to the Church in Need’s aid payments, the charity’s UK director Neville Kyrke-Smith said: “As one bishop from Haiti told me earlier in the year, Aid to the Church in Need has Christ at its heart – and the friends of the charity are offering the hope of Christ to those in such need at this time.

“Our thanks are extended to all who join us in solidarity and prayer with suffering Christians today – for you are shining the light of Christ’s love amidst darkness and oppression.”

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