{"id":29651,"date":"2018-07-10T10:02:48","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T10:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acnmalta.org\/?p=29651"},"modified":"2018-07-11T08:17:42","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T08:17:42","slug":"rome-from-houses-to-churches-report-of-acns-main-activities-in-2017-acn-internal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2018\/07\/10\/rome-from-houses-to-churches-report-of-acns-main-activities-in-2017-acn-internal\/","title":{"rendered":"ROME: \u201cFrom houses to churches\u201d &#8211; Report of ACN&#8217;s main activities in 2017 &#8211; ACN Malta"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style><h2><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>\u201cFrom houses to churches\u201d &#8211; Report of ACN&#8217;s main activities in 2017<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Aid to the Church in Need\u2019s (ACN) annual activity report for 2017 was presented on 4 July 2018 in Rome. ACN\u2019s international director, Thomas Heine-Geldem was present alongside other ACN representatives, including Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, major penitentiary of the Vatican\u2019s Apostolic Penitentiary and President of ACN international.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Cardinal Piacenza, outlining the history of the foundation in 1947, recalled that the idea of Pius XII was to have a work that dealt with the miseries caused by the Second World War &#8220;by not discriminating against anyone and not even the former executioners &#8220;, and a work was created with&#8221; personnel more and more specialised, but not bureaucratised &#8220;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;We have not &#8211; says Cardinal Piacenza &#8211; become a sort of organization of solidarity. This has remained a work of the Church, a pastoral work.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Thomas Heine-Geldem outlined the guidelines of the foundation: loyal to the Pope, at the service of the cause of evangelisation, committed to the persecuted Church and guardian of the generosity of our benefactors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">ACN\u2019s main role is pastoral work, along with humanitarian aid. Although ACN provides practical help for persecuted Christians, the first priority is always to give pastoral support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">ACN has 23 international offices and supports projects virtually anywhere in the world, excluding the rich first world of Western Europe, North America and Australia.\u00a0 Most of ACN&#8217;s aid projects are in Africa, followed by Asia, Latin America, Eastern and Central Europe, and the Middle East.<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0In general, 32.8% of the projects were destined for reconstruction, 15.7% for emergency aid, 15.4% for Masses, 12.1% for training, 9.6% per cent for catechesis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">After the so-called Arab spring of 2011, there has been an i<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">ncreasing\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">trend of\u00a0 aid\u00a0 projects to the tortured area Middle East region. On a per country basis,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Iraq was the greatest beneficiary of ACN projects, then India, Syria, Ukraine, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The 2017 report of ACN\u2019s activity is a moving portrait of a reality that is hard, but which is also full of hope. Although pastoral support is a priority, there are exceptional cases such as the Iraqi one, in which pastoral support must exceptionally be replaced by the priority for humanitarian aid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> In terms of where most of the money is spent, Africa again took the lead, followed by the Middle East, which Heine-Geldem said was the result of a concrete decision by ACN to provide \u201cexceptional\u201d support to the region to help Christians remain there&#8230; \u201cIf Christians are not helped to stay there, they will be forced to leave,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cif we don\u2019t have Christians in the Middle East, there is no need to help with pastoral work.\u201d There were 41 projects funded in Iraq and 143 in Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Most of ACN\u2019s funding in Iraq is going toward the Nineveh Plains Reconstruction Project, and providing spiritual support through Masses, formation and catechesis, as well as food and transport. The reconstruction project, Heine-Geldem said, has also helped bring different Christian rites in Iraq together and has allowed them to interact in a way that was not typical in the past. Thus, the Marshall plan for Iraq was first of all aimed at the reconstruction of war-damaged homes. But now it&#8217;s time to think about churches too. For this reason, the goal of 2018 is to move \u201cfrom houses to churches\u201d&#8230; and it&#8217;s not just a slogan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In Syria, which is second on the list of Middle Eastern aid recipients for ACN, most of the funding still comes in the form of basic humanitarian aid since the country is still at war. \u201cWe still have war, we still have uncertainty, and people still need emergency help in order enable Christians there to remain or to entice them to return,\u201d Heine-Geldem said, reiterating that the organization\u2019s main priority is to help Christians stay in their home country. \u201cThis is not a political statement about immigration, but it is our vocation to do that,\u201d he said, explaining that from even from a geopolitical view, they don\u2019t want the area to become \u201ctotally Christian free.\u201d \u201cChristians are a good backbone of society,\u201d he said, noting that many Muslims have told him Christians are needed in the Middle East, because they form the majority of the middle class, and are educated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In terms of 2018, Heine-Geldem said Syria and Iraq will continue to be a priority, as will the religious freedom report ACN publishes annually, which will be released in November.\u00a0 Additionally, India will also be a key focus, with particular attention for Catholics who are members of the \u201cDalit\u201d class, which is the lowest in the caste and whose members are considered \u201cuntouchable\u201d and less than human. These people are \u201coppressed and neglected by the system,\u201d and they also face increasing religious persecution from the amplified presence of Hindu extremists, Heine-Geldem said, noting that ACN recently launched a campaign to \u201copen the eyes\u201d of the world to what is happening on the ground. \u201cFrom what I\u2019ve seen, they really deserve our help. It is a very serious situation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><\/h5>\n<h5><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>ACN Malta<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cFrom houses to churches\u201d &#8211; Report of ACN&#8217;s main activities in 2017 &nbsp; Aid to the Church in Need\u2019s (ACN) annual activity report for 2017 was presented on 4 July 2018 in Rome. ACN\u2019s international director, Thomas Heine-Geldem was present alongside other ACN representatives, including Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, major penitentiary of the Vatican\u2019s Apostolic Penitentiary&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-newsletters"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>ROME: \u201cFrom houses to churches\u201d - Report of ACN&#039;s main activities in 2017 - ACN Malta - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2018\/07\/10\/rome-from-houses-to-churches-report-of-acns-main-activities-in-2017-acn-internal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ROME: \u201cFrom houses to churches\u201d - Report of ACN&#039;s main activities in 2017 - ACN Malta - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cFrom houses to churches\u201d &#8211; Report of ACN&#8217;s main activities in 2017 &nbsp; Aid to the Church in Need\u2019s (ACN) annual activity report for 2017 was presented on 4 July 2018 in Rome. 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