Pope elevates Aid to the Church in Need to Pontifical Foundation

The international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need has been elevated by Pope Benedict XVI to the status of a Pontifical Foundation.

The official seat of the foundation is the Vatican. This canonical act was enacted by a Chirograph, an official document in Latin personally signed by the Pope.

The Pope assigned the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, as the President of the Foundation. He in turn has nominated Baron Johannes Heereman von Zuydtwyck as Executive President, with immediate effect as of December 1st, 2011.

The international headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need will remain in Königstein, near Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

For the 30 years preceding his present appointment, Baron Heereman was Secretary-General, and later Executive President of the Knights of Malta in Germany.

Concurrent to this nomination, Father Martin Barta was appointed Ecclesiastical Assistant for Aid to the Church in Need. Father Barta is a member of the Clerical Association "Work of Jesus High Priest".

The initial impulse for the founding of Aid to the Church in Need came from Pope Pius XII. Inspired by the Pope's plea just after the Second World War to reach out to the 14 million post-war refugees in Germany, the Norbertine priest Werenfried van Straaten launched an appeal for reconciliation through charitable deeds. As among other things he collected bacon, he soon became known as 'the Bacon Priest'.

Today Aid to the Church in Need is a worldwide community of over 600,000 friends and benefactors and supports approximately 5,000 aid projects every year in over 140 different countries. In 2010 the total amount of donations came to 85 million euros. The charity's benefactors are taken care of through 17 national offices in Europe, North and South America and Australia.

In the Chirograph signed by the Holy Father, he emphasised the decades-long services of Aid to the Church in Need for the Church.

Now a Pontifical Foundation, Aid to the Church in Need will continue as before, in a spirit of active charity to help wherever the Church faces hardship or persecution. As a pastoral charity, acting in the name of the Church, it is committed to strengthening and deepening Catholic faith and moral life.

For more information on Aid to the Church in Need, see: www.acnuk.org/