Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to honour murdered French priest

Seminarians in select countries of Africa will be among some of the beneficiaries of a campaign, which the Catholic Charity organisation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is launching in honour of the murdered French Catholic priest, Father Jacques Hamel.

A total of 1,000 seminarians from 21 countries around the world will benefit from the ACN collections in honour of Father Hamel who was murdered by ISIS sympathisers while celebrating Mass on 26 July in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, France.

The studies of future Catholic priests from Angola, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, DR Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia will be funded, in part, from the collection of funds by the Italian chapter of the pontifical foundation ACN.

“Support for the formation of new priests is a concrete response to fundamentalism, because especially in countries where the extremist threat is the greatest, the ministers of God must possess the appropriate tools to promote dialogue and contribute to a peaceful coexistence between all the religious groups, putting an end to the conflicts,” Director of ACN in Italy, Alessandro Monteduro has been quoted as telling Catholic News Agency.

ACN is “as an international Catholic charity under the guidance of the Holy Father” with the mission “to help suffering and persecuted faithful worldwide.”

“We chose the seminaries that had the greatest need for aid, to allow them to accommodate more students and form what we consider to be the new 'soldiers of the faith.'” Monteduro of ACN has also been quoted as explaining the justification for choosing Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Other countries whose seminarians will be supported include the countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Romania, and India.

(Father Don Bosco Onyalla, CANAA in Nairobi)

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