Scottish Catholic Observer

IF you are a Catholic or any kind of Christian living under persecution or oppression anywhere in the world, you will have found ACN there for you.

Or if you are a church in a poor country struggling to provide Catholic education for your children, hospitals for your sick, or seminaries to train your next generation of priests, you will have found ACN your closest friend and support. When you are living in terror it is so important to know someone has heard your cry and is standing up to the governments of the world for your freedom to grow up and worship in peace and security.

If you are a young Church needing financial support to get on your feet you will never forget how ACN helped you—and you will remember us when you become strong one day and we need your help.

The Scriptures tell us that strong churches have to help the suffering churches and, with ACN, this solidarity continues until today.

ACN impresses me in so many ways. It is easy to become complacent living in the freedom and prosperity of the West, but the Church is really struggling in many parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas.

I cannot believe the sheer scale of work ACN carries out in all these areas for such a small charity. They are working in 140 countries, nearly half the world, and are supporting more than 5,000 projects.

Above all is it good to know that the charity lives at the heart of our Catholic Faith. As a Pontifical foundation it is the Pope’s own charity and wherever it works it is helping persecuted Christians. It is awful to think that in the last 100 years more Christians have been martyred than in all the other centuries put together—the Church of the martyrs is today.

But it is just as good to know that by far the biggest problem for Pope Francis is not that the Church is in decline, but that it is growing more rapidly than at any time in our history without exception. The needs of the Church are equally about security from persecution and resources to grow. That is why you find ACN working in Aleppo, Syria, helping refugee families and in Egypt protecting vulnerable priests. They are also working in Burma building new chapels and buying tractors and in Pakistan supporting student priests.

But all this excellent work comes at a cost—and I would love the people of the UK to support ACN by getting involved.

For the past two years I have led the Annual Scottish ACN Youth Rally at Carfin Grotto near Motherwell and have been amazed as more than 1,000 schoolchildren gathered to stand ip for Faith and freedom. Young people know they should be free to worship their Faith and not be persecuted for their beliefs.

The Youth Rally was full of fun and colour—but also had a serious side to it with facts, action and prayer.

On the day many of our youngsters signed up to follow ACN on Facebook and Twitter—raising awareness is very important—and I would encourage as many of you as possible to boost the charity’s profile by following them on social media.

It is vital to be campaigning at home to get this global issue of our times onto the floor of Westminster and Holyrood and to get facts and stories out to our schools and parishes. If this issue is particularly close to your heart, please get in touch with ACN and offer to volunteer in your local office.

I would also encourage schools, parishes and individuals to get involved in raising funds for ACN.

The work being done by ACN is amazing—but they need money to continue and that’s where we can all play a part. Maybe your school or parish could launch a fundraising campaign to help ACN continue supporting persecuted Christians?

Or you could ask your priest to have a bidding prayer every Sunday, and invite ACN to come and do a talk in your church? There are so many ways to help make our world free to believe and be a better place to live.

Despite doing incredible work, ACN are still relatively small in the UK.

Some charities are more popular or politically correct than others.

If you are flying with Ryanair or British Airways you will be invited to hand in spare coins to Comic Relief, who promise to help children and the poor. These are good things but you never hear them support pro-life or persecuted Christians.

These suffering fellow human beings are just as deserving but nothing like as popular, so they become the Cinderellas of the charity sector.

That’s why we have to give special time and help to the likes of ACN. If we do not help them, as Catholics you really have to ask who is going to bother? We need to call out the political correctness in us that makes us so hesitant, come to our senses and stand up and be counted for our fellow Catholics in urgent and ongoing need around the world.

God bless the good work of Aid to the Church in Need.

Bishop John Keenan is link bishop for Aid to the Church in Need. Find out more at www.acnuk.org/acn-in-scotland