INTERNATIONAL: Christmas gifts to the Church in Need

By John Pontifex

Seminarians in the snow in Ukraine

More than 1,000 Ukrainian seminarians enduring the winter cold have good reason for festive cheer after support for their studies topped the list of aid payments from Aid to the Church in Need’s UK office in Sutton, Surrey.

The charity is providing key assistance totalling £270,000 to seminarians from the Ivano-Frankivsk diocese and others from nearby Lviv, as well as students attending a theological academy in Uzhhorod.

The aid payments in support of the 1,070 Ukrainian seminarians are among 80 grants being paid out this month (December) by Aid to the Church in Need, which, since the darkest days of the Cold War, has prioritised help for the Church in Eastern Europe.

Seminarians from other parts of the suffering Church also receive help including those from St Paul’s Major Seminary in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, 90 students from the Archdiocese of Bertoua, Cameroun and nearly 80 young men preparing for priesthood in Olomouc, in the Czech Republic.

At the close of a year in which Aid to the Church in Need’s UK office has focused on the plight of Christians in Pakistan, the charity is providing more aid for 30 seminarians at Christ the King Seminary, in Karachi, and there is support too for students for the priesthood in Hebei province in China, outside Beijing.

More seminarians benefitting from the aid payments include those in Grodno, Belarus, supported for 10 years by Saint Patrick’s Church, Shieldmuir, Scotland.

Shieldmuir’s near neighbours, Saint Bride’s Church, Cambuslang, helped support youth work and the teaching of Christianity in northern Vietnam where Aid to the Church in Need UK is giving aid.

In line with Pope Benedict XVI’s request that the charity give priority to the Middle East, the UK office is providing £45,000 to build a church hall in Makhoul, in the Galilee, in the diocese of Greek Catholic Archbishop Elias Chacour.

In Iraq, the charity is helping with Christmas food packages for poor and sick families in and around the town of Zakho, close to the Turkish/Syrian border. Iraqi Christians living as refugees in Syria are receiving £18,000.

Meanwhile, two cathedrals in Islam-dominated North Africa receive £45,000 each for urgent repairs. They include Saint Augustine of Hippo’s Cathedral in Annaba, north-east Algeria, and the cathedral in the Tunisian capital, Tunis.

Elsewhere in Africa, Aid to the Church in Need UK is helping with £45,000 to repair a church damaged by an earthquake in Bukavu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and there are funds for another church to be renovated in the archdiocese of Huambo, in Angola.

Neville Kyrke-Smith, Aid to the Church in Need UK director, said: “The Church in Ukraine witnesses to the hope we celebrate this Christmas time. For this land of suffering is now seeing a new springtime of vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

“So much of this has come about due to the wonderful support of the friends and benefactors of Aid to the Church in Need.”

Tagged with

• Action
• Algeria
• Angola
• Belarus
• Cameroon
• China
• Czech Republic
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Diocese of Motherwell
• Iraq
• Israel
• Pakistan
• Palestine
• Scotland
• Seminarians
• Sudan
• Tunisia
• Ukraine

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