Vatican City, 10 October, 2025 / 4:21 pm (ACI Africa).
Pope Leo XIV on Friday received at the Vatican members of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a pontifical foundation that supports the Catholic Church in its evangelizing work in the world’s most needy, discriminated-against, and persecuted communities.
In his initial greeting, the Holy Father emphasized the importance of their work, especially in a world that continues to “witness growing hostility and violence against those who hold different beliefs, including many Christians.”
According to the pope, ACN’s mission — which funds more than 5,000 pastoral and humanitarian emergency projects in 137 countries — proclaims that, as one family in Christ, “we do not abandon our persecuted brothers and sisters.”
Pope Leo XIV emphasized that “the suffering of any member of the body of Christ is shared by the entire Church.” ACN was founded in 1947, the Holy Father recalled, to defend religious freedom and as a response to the “immense suffering left behind by the war,” with the aim of promoting forgiveness and reconciliation.
The Holy Father firmly stated that “the right to religious freedom is not optional but essential,” referring to it as “a cornerstone of every just society, as it safeguards the moral space in which conscience can be formed and exercised.”
