Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a leading Catholic charity, was happy to oblige when Sisters in India came up with a plan to offer some milk of human kindness… with a little help from a few four-legged friends.
A grant for three milking cows for Rosarian Sisters in Kerala, southern India, is among a long and varied list of grants announced this month by ACN.
The cows will enable the contemplative Sisters at St. Teresa’s Convent, Trivandrum, to retail milk and other dairy products to help fund the care of elderly nuns who are sick or bed-ridden.
The Rosarian Order’s provincial superior, Sr. Lissy Tresa, wrote to ACN: “We solely depend on your generosity… We assure you of our daily prayers in a special way.”
Funds for the cows are among a series of aid payments from ACN this month, with a number of grants for communities of Sisters, especially in Eastern Europe.
These include assistance for sick and elderly nuns in Poland and Belarus and support for Sisters in the Archdiocese of Moscow, Russia, and others doing pastoral work in the Diocese of Kiev, Ukraine.
In many of the former Communist countries, ACN’s help is vital to strengthen a Church that was suppressed by the authorities for generations.
The charity is also helping the Evangelizing Sisters of Mary in Kenya work to towards being self-sufficient, as well as supporting their novices.
ACN is also supporting more than a dozen Church building projects worldwide.
These include help to enable Kenya’s Diocese of Bissau to finish building a chapel, as well as help for repairs on the Conception Nuns’ convent chapel in Bolivia and four other chapels in Ethiopia.
Other projects include formation for priests and seminarians in countries including Poland and Mexico, new transportation to help priests reach far flung parts of their parishes in Ghana and Belarus, and water pumps for a parish in Senegal.
