Emergency aid totaling just over $30,000 is being dispatched by Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to help disaster-stricken people in the Gaza Strip. Administered by Church authorities in the region, the aid will target some of those worst affected in a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the ongoing violence which began almost two weeks ago.
Announcing the emergency funding, Pierre-Marie Morel, ACN International General Secretary, appealed for prayer. Calling on ACN’s 700,000 benefactors around the world to pray for peace, Mr. Morel said, “We know that our financial support can do no more than ease the worst of the need.” He added, “The bombs and grenades in Gaza make no distinction between peaceful Christian civilians and warring Hamas supporters.”
Speaking by telephone to Aid to the Church in Need project staff, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal underlined the gravity of the humanitarian problems in Gaza and the shock of the violence, coming unexpectedly so soon after Christmas.
Concerns about supplies of basic food, water and shelter mounted after it took 10 days for a truce to be called to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Key to the distribution of the ACN aid will be Monsignor Manuel Musallam, parish priest of Holy Family Parish, in Gaza City, who last week spoke on the telephone to the charity describing the people’s suffering. At the time, Msgr. Mussallam said, “The people are weeping – men, women and children are weeping. They are desperate to find ways to feed themselves, how to ensure their protection.”
In a massively overpopulated region of 1.5 million people – more than half of them children – there are only 5,000 Christians. About 300 of them are Catholic (Latin Rite) and the vast majority are Greek Orthodox.
Aid to the Church in Need, which helps persecuted and other suffering Christians, has increased its support for the Church in the Middle East after Pope Benedict XVI told the charity of his concern that some of the region’s Christian communities “are threatened in their very existence.”
