Africa Listed as Top Beneficiary of 2022 Aid to the Church in Need Donations

Nairobi, 20 July, 2023 / 9:50 PM

The people of God in Africa benefited the most from the donations that were channeled through Catholic Pontifical and charity foundation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) International.

ACN supports the Church all over the world, especially in places where Christians are in desperate need owing to persecution and poverty.

The charity foundation has reported reaching a “new high” in 2022 in collecting donations for persecuted Christians, a significant chunk of which went to Africa and Ukraine.

“Throughout 2022, the Aid to the Church in Need Foundation received around €146 million in donations globally, a figure never reached in the entire history of the institution. Ukraine and Africa were the countries and regions of the globe that benefited most from the generosity of the pontifical foundation's benefactors around the world,” the ACN says in the Thursday, July 20 report.

The Catholic charity foundation adds, “The African continent was the area of the globe that benefited most from the help of benefactors, with 31.5%, followed by the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe, with 18.1% and 17.7% respectively. Latin America received 16.7% of aid and Asia and Oceania 14.6%, with the remaining 1.4% going to other areas.”

In 2022, ACN raised almost €13 million more than in 2021.

The foundation has expressed gratitude to its benefactors for raising the donations, saying, “This amount reflects the unparalleled generosity of the institution's more than 364,000 individual benefactors and allows it to feed the Church that suffers in so many countries around the world.”

ACN funded 5,702 projects in various countries in the world with donations the foundation received from its benefactors in the 23 countries where the institution is present.

The charity foundation has been working tirelessly to promote solidarity with the Church in regions where her presence and activities are most threatened.

“Religious persecution and extreme poverty, visible in so many countries, call for constant aid that has not stopped growing. ACN benefactors around the world continue to ensure that this suffering Church receives the help it needs most,” reads the ACN report.

The foundation’s projects include the support of the construction of churches and church institutions, support of the formation of Seminarians, and donations to Priests serving in hardship areas.

The foundation reports that over the past year, 972 building projects have been supported, more than a third of them for churches or chapels.

In many African countries, the foundation has also facilitated the mobility of pastoral caregivers, especially in places that have poor accessibility.

For these, ACN distributed 1,253 vehicles, including 564 cars, 252 motorcycles, 16 boats, 11 buses, and 4 trucks, as well as 406 bicycles.

The Foundation has also supported the livelihoods of more than 40,000 Priests through Mass stipends, and some 21,000 Religious Sisters, as well as almost 14,000 Seminarians.

Over the past year, the ACN Foundation has also supported projects in the area of information and evangelization, including the publication of religious literature, prayer campaigns, and the defense of persecuted Christians.