The Voice of the suffering and persecuted​

“It was a heartbreaking scene,” he said. “They were given a mass burial in a rain-soaked grave. These are poor villagers who don’t have money for food, much less coffins.”

Due to visa restrictions and financial difficulty, many young Christians in Syria and Lebanon were unable to travel to Portugal for the event. But with the help of ACN, they organized their own activities, in parallel with the official WYD, and participated in the experience.

Many of the families spent the night in sugar cane fields – up to 1,000 people.” They had been running away, trying to find somewhere where they could rest. “Some of them went back to their homes desperate for something to eat but when they got home, they found everything destroyed – nothing to sit on, nothing to drink out of, not even a lightbulb.”

Christians from the Punjab town of Jaranwala, near Faisalabad, fled en masse as fanatics began throwing rocks and setting fire to buildings. The incident follows an accusation of blasphemy against a Christian cleaner accused of desecrating the Qur’an and insulting the Prophet of Islam.

Archbishop Lumon added that his community has been “cut off from the rest of the world” for the last three months, because of an “Internet and social media ban imposed by the government ever since communal violence erupted in the state.”

Over the past 30 years, ACN has been involved in more than 700 projects for Christians in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, including over 100 in partnership with the Latin Patriarchate. But according to Akroush, this cooperation is about to be more significant than ever before.

In many parts of Africa, including northern Ghana, children who are born with mental or physical disabilities are considered bewitched, or “evil,” and they are often left to die, if not outright killed. This is where Sister Therese steps in: she takes custody of the children and gives them a home where they are loved and cared for.

On August 6, 2014, the world watched in horror as ISIS jihadists poured into Iraq’s Nineveh Plains, forcing hundreds of thousands of Christians to flee their ancestral land to save their lives.

The laypeople keep the Church alive. They are true heroes, the guardians of the faith in their communities, because there are hardly any priests or religious around.

"I have never encountered a charity that is so professionally organized on the one hand, and on the other, has so many people who are burning for the Kingdom of God. "