Scottish Catholic Observer

EMERGENCY help for people fleeing violence and persecution in northern Syria is foremost among more than 30 projects being paid out this month by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need in Scotland and the rest of the UK.

“Christians around the world need our help like never before,” Lorraine McMahon, ACN head of operations in Scotland,  said. “In particular, in the Middle East the Islamic State threatens to undermine the very existence of Christianity in this region.”

Working with religious superiors and bishops in the region, ACN is dispatching more than £152,250 to provide fuel, oil, gas, electricity and rental costs for displaced families in Aleppo and Hassake. There is a growing shortage of basic supplies and sky-rocketing inflation, the effects of which are especially severe for Christians who have suffered religious persecution.

Significant aid is bound for Hassake city in north-east Syria, where thousands of Assyrian Christians have fled over the past few weeks following IS attacks on their villages and kidnappings. Latest reports show the militants have surrounded Hassake and inhabitants are increasingly afraid of suspected Islamic state infiltration within the city.

The ACN UK March 2015 aid payments also include help for six Chaldean Sisters working in Erbil, northern Iraq, where last August 125,000 Christians fled IS with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.

Balancing emergency aid priorities with pre-existing pastoral aims central to the charity’s work, the latest aid payments also include support for seminarians in Lebanon and there are three projects for Egypt, two involving summer camps and other activities for Coptic Catholic youth.

The ACN UK projects list also includes two schemes for Ukrainian youngsters: summer and Christmas holiday Christian education camps—one of them led by students from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Holy Spirit Seminary, in Lviv.

In Pakistan, ACN is supporting an in-depth Biblical studies course in Urdu language, providing 600 Bibles for small Christians in Galle, southern Sri Lanka and providing support for Catholic youngsters in Vietnam.

The charity is also providing support for church communities in China, Burma (Myanmar), Tanzania, Lumshnong, India and Ethiopia. Further aid is going in support of 70 seminarians studying in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo, another 70 seminarians in Peru and the training and formation of priests in Burkina Faso.

Ms McMahon added: “ACN Scotland would like to partner with schools across the country to educate and engage young people to learn more about the persecuted Church.

“As a global citizen, learning about persecution, religious freedom and human rights issues will be an invaluable and necessary challenge for the youth of today.”

Visit www.acnuk.org

Pics: (Above) Priest, sisters and lay Catholics providing basic food and other basic help in Syria. (Below) Emergency help is given out in the Valley of the Christains, nears Homs, Syria