During Mass we had a very moving appeal from Dr. Heather Ward from Nottingham. She spoke simply but with deep sincerity of the plight of Christians in the Sudan. Aid to the Church in Need is virtually their only source of help since the conditions there are so dangerous other aid agencies have had to pull out. Their deep love of the Mass means that some walk for five days in order to be able to receive the Eucharist. The Sudan is just one area where this organisation is working. There are many others. Like me , you may have bought one of the little prayer books written and created by four teenage Lithuanian girls, Lione, Vale, Levute and Adele when they were imprisoned in a Siberian Labour camp in 1943. The strength and beauty of their faith under terrible conditions and suffering will inspire you.
The Bacon Priest is Fr. Werenfried van Straaten from Mijdrecht in Holland. As a Norbertine priest ( or perhaps better known to us as Premonstratensians -the very same order who founded our church in Moorends) he realised at the end of the Second World War the desperate plight of the ordinary German families who were starving. Nobody wanted to help them after the terrible years of war and suffering that their leaders had inflicted on Europe. Yet Christ's words are - feed the hungry, clothe the naked. As you do this for the least of my brothers, you do it for me. So Fr. Werenfried cajoled his neighbours in Tongerloo in Belgium into donating food and clothes to their former enemies. If you wat to know how the story develops then read the book in the parish library FR.WERENFRIED - A LIFE by Joanna Bogle. It is a wonderful story of steadfast faith and courage, a true sign of Christ to the world. Fr. Werenfried died earler this year at the age of ninety. He will most surely have been welcomed into his heavenly home with a smile and a hearty embrace. Requiescat in pace.You can find the UK website of Aid to the Church in Need at www.acnuk.net where you can learn more about the work of the charity. The site also contains more about the "Bacon Priest" as follows
1947 It was on Christmas Day 1947 that ACN was born in the Norbertine abbey of Tongerlo in Belgium. It was here that the Dutch Norbertine priest, Father Werenfried van Straaten, published an article in his abbey newsletter, entitled "Peace on Earth?/No Room at the Inn". In it he appealed for help for the 14 million German refugees expelled from their homes in the former German territories of Eastern Europe and now living in poverty in a bombed-out Germany. At the same time he appealed for reconciliation with these "enemies of yesterday".
1948 During 1948 help flooded in for Germany from Belgium and Holland. It included food, clothes, shoes, and especially bacon - which quickly earned Father Werenfried his nickname of "Bacon Priest". Later 3,000 so-called "rucksack priests" - refugee priests ministering to their fellow refugees in Germany - were "adopted" by hundreds of thousands of Flemish school pupils.
1949 In this year the first links with our present headquarters in Königstein, Germany, were established. Father Werenfried began an important collaboration with Monsignor Kindermann, who had founded a refugee centre and a seminary for refugee seminarians here. Back in Belgium big campaigns were launched, among them the "Vehicle for God" initiative, which aimed to provide the "rucksack priests" with motorbikes and later with 120 Volkswagen "Beetles".
