Shedding light on the plight of Christians worldwide

Retired former Director of Aid to the Church in Need UK, Neville Kyrke-Smith, gave us a talk about the Catholic charity’s most recent and inspiring work, sharing his experience and telling us more about the current challenges many Christians around the world are facing.

To give us an idea of all the work Aid to the Church (ACN) has been doing and help us reflect on the magnitude of the support persecuted Christians need in many parts of our world, Neville mentioned some recent reports from several countries. Among them were moving stories of what he had witnessed in Northern Iraq and also in Syria and Lebanon. He described how priests, sisters and volunteers have provided food, medicine, clothes and pastoral care to desperate families in Aleppo in Syria where the situation remains very difficult for all the population. He quoted for us the deeply inspiring words from a Christian grand-mother who had fled her village in Syria back in 2016 as it was being attacked:

“We have the faith of Jesus and Mary – we are still alive!”

He said that although Christian communities in Lebanon were not being targeted in the recent conflict they were still caught up in the middle of a terrible escalation of violence. “ACN supported and continues to help with more than 300 projects in the country – including emergency aid, working through the churches and religious communities,” he said.

Having visited Ukraine many times in the past, Neville also shared some insights into the current situation and the plight of Christians as a whole. There are over 30 million Christians living in Ukraine, he said, with the latest figures suggesting that well over 3 million of those are Ukrainian Greek Catholics, representing around 12% of the population compared to 8% in 2014.

“Nearly 10% of the population have been displaced due to the conflict in their homeland,” he said. “Catholic, Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests or sisters there have been helped in some way by Aid to the Church in Need over the years. Their pastoral work and witness now are of immense importance.”

He stressed the importance of prayer and how vital a role prayer plays in supporting all the work being done on the ground.
“We would not be reaching out in faith and love if it was not for your prayers and those of communities, priests and benefactors around the world,” he told us.

“There is so much to be done. So many refugees have fled violence and persecution and Christians continue to be discriminated against and suffer – surviving only with the support of charities like ours,” he highlighted, before focusing more particularly on the plight of Christians in Nigeria where more persecution of Christians is taking place than anywhere else in the world.

To give us an idea of just how critical the situation is over there, he mentioned that 17,500 churches have been attacked, 2,000 Christian schools destroyed and at least 3 million people have been internally displaced in the past 12 years. There is also the harrowing reality of priests and religious being kidnapped and Christian communities being attacked. But, he said, these attacks have sadly become so frequent that they don’t even make the headlines anymore.

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” – Tertullian, early Christian theologian

“Yet, there is a growth in vocations to the priesthood in many dioceses,” he highlighted. “Some have told us how they were inspired by the witness of the priests they knew who died.”

See more on the situation in Nigeria here.