The Fourth Sunday of Easter also known as the Good Shepherd Sunday is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. This year marks the 61st anniversary of this event which was initiated by Pope Paul VI during the Second Vatican Council in 1964. In celebrating this occasion, Pope Francis reminds [...]
A pilgrim image of Our Lady of Fátima, blessed by Pope Paul VI in 1967, was recently at the international headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) in Königstein, Germany. The executive president of ACN International, Regina Lynch, stressed the connection between ACN and the message of Fátima, [...]
Thousands of people have signed a petition calling for the beatification of 171 Catholics slain during the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo yesterday (21st April) received the appeal from Catholics in his diocese calling for the slaughtered Christians to be beatified – [...]
Pope Francis made a heartfelt appeal on Sunday 14th April following the Regina Coeli, when he called for a stop to any actions that may fuel the "spiral of violence" in the Middle East that risk plunging the region into an even wider war. The Pope said he is following [...]
A bishop in Pakistan has expressed his disappointment with the authorities for failing to bring to justice those behind one of the country’s worst attacks against Christians – and for not doing enough to help victims. Highlighting the growing fears of his people, Bishop Indrias Rehmat of Faisalabad said that [...]
In December, Maxime François-Marsal, the coordinator ofACN’s projects in French-speaking countries in Central Africa, travelled to Congo-Brazzaville, also known as the Republic of the Congo, a nation which borders Angola, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among others. In this interview he speaks about the situation of the [...]
Civil war has caused the Sudan’s small Christian minority to decline drastically – but there are signs of new life in the Church. Despite more than 13,900 deaths and 8.1 million having suffered displacement since the conflict broke out a year ago on 15th April 2023, local Church sources expressed [...]
Aid to the Church in Need is helping the local Church serve new and growing communities of people who are moving from rural to urban areas, often in poor conditions. Millions of people continue to flock from rural areas in the remote Amazon region of Brazil to larger cities, hoping [...]
An armed gang attacked a seminary in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince on Easter Monday (1st April), forcing staff to hide for six hours while the premises were ransacked. The gunmen destroyed or stole anything they could find at the Minor Seminary of Saint-Martial – run by the Congregation of the Holy [...]
An abbot in the Holy Land has criticised the international community, accusing people of treating the crisis “as if it was a simple game” rather than responding to the urgent needs of families trapped in a “terrible situation”. Abbot Nikodemus Schnabel of Jerusalem’s Benedictine Dormition Abbey told Aid to the [...]
