To mark the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, celebrated on Good Shepherd Sunday, which this year falls on 8 May, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is sharing a series of testimonials of young men who have chosen to prepare for the priesthood. Currently over 100 thousand young [...]

A WAVE OF UNREST AND KIDNAPPINGS IS CAUSING A BREAKDOWN OF NATIONAL LIFE IN HAITI according to Archbishop Launay Saturné of Cap-Haïtien. April 28, a group of heavily armed bandits kidnapped several people, including Father Whatner Aupont, priest of St Joseph the Worker’s church at Grand’ Ravine in the Diocese [...]

Shagufta and Shafqat Emmanuel, a Catholic couple who lived in Mian Channu, a small town 250 km south of Lahore, Pakistan, were arrested on false charges of blasphemy in July 2013. After eight years in the death row, separated from each other and their four children, they were finally released [...]

There are 110 priests actively working in the Diocese of Jagdalpur in the state of Chhattisgarh, central-eastern India. Their work is hard and demands great self-sacrifice, for their ministry is in remote and underdeveloped regions and involves travelling long and difficult journeys. The diocese covers an area of around 15,000 [...]

A 72-year-old religious sister has been praised for her “extraordinary courage” after she sought to disarm a man stabbing a priest at a Catholic church in Nice, south-eastern France. Sister Marie-Claude reportedly intervened after a 31-year-old man entered the Saint-Pierre d’Arene church before Sunday Mass on April 24 and repeatedly [...]

Monsignor Joseph Spiteri says that Lebanon is a unique country in the Middle East because it is based on a civil constitution, where freedom of conscience and expression are respected. The diplomatic representative of the Holy See thanks ACN for helping to preserve this balance through projects that encourage the [...]

A church in Iraq has marked their first Easter services since Islamic State militants desecrated the building almost eight years ago. St Kyriakos’s Chaldean Catholic Church, in Batnaya, saw militant extremists decapitate statues and smash the altar during attacks in 2014. Sacred images hung above the alter were used as [...]

Bishop Théophile Nare , Bishop of Kaya, in the north of Burkina Faso has denounced the kidnapping of the American nun Suellen Tennyson , 83 years old, at the hands of unidentified armed men. “On the night of April 4, armed men broke into the religious community of the Yalgo [...]

"Thinking about the humanitarian tragedy of Ukraine, still under the bombardment of this sacrilegious war, let us not get tired of praying and helping those who suffer". With these words, before the Marian recitation of the Angelus, Francis again, this time from the island of Malta, recalled the drama that [...]

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has just approved an emergency relief package for Latin Rite female congregations involved in charity work in the Archdiocese of Lviv in Ukraine, such as the Benedictines of Solonka, who opened the doors of their contemplative monastery to assist refugees. Sister with [...]