Vatican City, Jul 4, 2018 / 08:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Since 2014 international charity organization Aid to the Church in Need has spent some 40 million euros [$46.6 million] funding relief and reconstruction efforts in Iraq, with the majority of support going toward basic needs such as housing.
However, according to Thomas Heine-Geldem, executive president of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), now that the international community chipping in to rebuild Christian villages destroyed when ISIS took over the Nineveh Plains in 2014, the organization’s primary focus will shift from funding basic reconstruction to restoring religious structures such as churches and monasteries, many of which were desecrated and burned under ISIS rule.
With nations such as Hungary, which has long supported for reconstruction efforts in Iraq, and the United States offering financial help, ACN can take a step back and focus on their “pastoral vocation,” Heine-Geldem said, noting how ACN was founded as a means of providing both spiritual and material help to Christians who are persecuted or living in poverty.
The next stage in the rebuilding process in Iraq, then, will center “on the renovation of destroyed churches, there are many, destroyed seminaries and destroyed monasteries. That’s back to our original vocation,” Heine-Geldem said.
In June the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) pledged to give some $10 million to two aid organizations working in Iraq, one of which is Catholic Relief Services, and an additional $25 million will be given later to support “persecuted communities” in Iraq, specifically Christians returning to the Nineveh Plains and Yazidis in Sinjar.
So far, structures being built or restored as part of this “pastoral vocation” include a pastoral center in the village of Kirkuk; a church in each of the villages of Teleskuf, Qaraqosh and Bartella; three convents for Dominican sisters serving in Bartella and Qaraqosh; and the Holy Family orphanage in Qaraqosh.
Representatives from ACN will be making visits to both Iraq and Syria within the next few months to determine what the needs are and to discuss with local ecclesial leaders which structures should be taken up next.
Heine-Geldem was present alongside other ACN representatives, including Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, major penitentiary of the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary and president of ACN international, at the July 4 presentation of the organization’s annual activity report for 2017.
According to the numbers in the report, last year ACN spent the majority of funds on projects in mission territories, supporting some 5,357 projects in 149 countries. The rest went toward administrative costs, advertising and fundraising.
The organization, which has offices in 23 countries around the world, had around 368,000 benefactors in 2017, with a large portion of funding also coming from Catholics who donated in exchange for a Mass intention for themselves or a loved one.
In total, ACN gave around 84.6 million euro [$98.5 million] in 2017 to support their mission projects, most of which are in Africa, followed by Asia, Latin America, Eastern and Central Europe, and the Middle East.
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 “exceptional” support to the region to help Christians stay.
“If Christians are not helped to stay there, they will be forced to leave,” he said, adding that “if we don’t have Christians in the Middle East, there is no need to help the pastoral work.”
Most of ACN’s funding in Iraq is going toward their 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.
“We have created a platform,” he said, noting that the committee for the project is composed of leaders from the Syriac Catholic Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syrian Orthodox Church.
“This is very, very important, because in addition to all these struggles, these tragedies, all this ethnic and religious persecution, we have still found a lack of experience in cooperation among Christians in the Middle East,” he said, noting that the committee as a body evaluates the needs and decides which villages or churches to focus on next.
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.
“We 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,” Heine-Geldem said, reiterating that the organization’s main priority is to help Christians stay in their home country.
“This is not a political statement about immigration, but it is our vocation to do that,” he said, explaining that from even from a geopolitical view, they don’t want the area to become “totally Christian free.”
“Christians are a good backbone of society,” 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.
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.
Additionally, India will also be a key focus, with particular attention for Catholics who are members of the “Dalit” class, which is the lowest in the caste and whose members are considered “untouchable” and less than human.
These people are “oppressed and neglected by the system,” 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 “open the eyes” of the world to what is happening on the ground.
“From what I’ve seen, they really deserve our help. It is a very serious situation.”
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I live in Phoenix.
Goodbye to Bishop Olmsted. Godspeed in all.
God help us with Dolan. Very familiar with his ‘outreach’ to active homosexuals and his disdain for the Catholic doctrine on morality.
This “George Soros” progressive papacy rides on.
Um, I think Mr Soros is Jewish. Not Catholic. Judaism has no pope.
How does Soros and the progressive papacy define ‘Catholic in name only’? Does Francis define the set of ‘Catholic’? Fratelli Tutti teaches that we are all brothers and sisters. Why do you draw religious distinctions if God wills them all, according to Francis?
Um, because you have to be a Catholic to be a pope.
Hint: it’s a light-hearted comment. Not to be over-thought.
Francis teaches falsely. We are not all brothers and sisters. Our brothers and sisters are our fellow Christians. Catholics used to know this, but have been progressively dumbed down in recent decades, and no longer grasp basic Christian doctrine.
I know, as do you and most other orthodox Catholics, that Francis’s teaching in Fratelli Tutti is not the way to global harmony, yet some like Flowerday and Soros support Francis’ claim. Francis and Soros both tend to sugar-coated, fruit-flavored brotherhood as what the world needs now: A great big tutti-frutti-flavored kiss, everyone to every other.
Francis and Flower use distinctions of religion when useful to distort, insult, or rationalize.
The Pope is CATHOLIC while Soros is JEWISH. Nothing in common there. Not even sugar-coated fruit. See how different they are?? Nothing to see.
Then Flowerday levels a ‘stupid-you type’ accusation against Ramjet and tells me I’ve missed a joke. Stupid Ram! Stupid me! Smart Flower!
To Flowerday: ?Over-thought? You ain’t seen the start.
You speak well on the matter. God bless you as you proclaim His majesty and truth.
The Unholy Alliance Between George Soros and Pope Francis
Ramjet’s comment flew right past you.
Soros finances the anti-Christian secular agenda, of which Francis has had many episodes of willful cooperation, or haven’t you troubled yourself to care? By the way, Soros is an atheist.
Olmsted, rock solid, was retired as soon as he resigned. The new bishop is McElroy groomed. Tradition in Phoenix will soon come under attack. Bet on it.
Yep. Bp. Olmstead here, Abp. Chaput a couple of years ago…Francis accepted their mandatory resignations before the letters had fluttered to the desktop. Outa the way, faithful bishops. There’s revolutionizing to be done!
More of the same.
May I recommend today’s article in The Catholic Thing?
From George to Cupich. Sarah to Roche. Olmsted to Dolan. Can it be any clearer? Lord, help us.
Inaxios.
Don’t miss the forest because of the trees. You know the general point that Ramjet is making. Don’t defend the indefensible.
SUNNY-SAN-DIEGO-BISHOPS:
A. Death penalty for murderers, even repeat offenders: “We have “progressed” to see now that this is “not admissible.” (Jez-Colonizers in Vatican City wrote that buzz for our “NEW-CAT.”)
Death penalty for the unborn…well yeah…Nancy said so.
Viva la revolution!
And remember, if you know what’s good for you, just pretend reality isn’t happening.
My meeting with Archbishop Olmsted when he visited my mission parish in the Gallup NM diocese as coadjutor was a happy experience. He was quite friendly, interested in the Jicarilla Apache mission, knowledgeable, steadfast in his faith. Later at a clergy convocation in Albuquerque we met again and had a welcome conversation on practice of the faith. Needless to say the Phoenix diocese is losing a very fine pastor.
I’m not at all pleased with his replacement, who seems more interested in protecting the rights of the deviant than practice of the faith. Bishop John Dolan’s appointment akin to Bishop McElroy’s elevation to the cardinalate reveals with little ambiguity the direction Pope Francis intends to take the Church. Humility and obedience are one thing, adherence to a misdirected effort is another.