The
Catholic Weekly
Online
Sydney
19 October 2003
Home
Archive
Subscribe
Links
Contact
Peace
in our hands
Jubilee
week for Pope
Special
guests at Mother Teresa’s beatification
School
insurance hike
Honoured
by university
It’s
truly feminine and truly beautiful
Spiritually
renewed by Lourdes
$1.75m
for Caritas
Catholic
Women’s Network
Board
short bonanza for Vinnies
Advice
to lectors, acolytes
Much
deeper reality
Editorial:
Time for tribute
Letters:
Barrel of a gun
Conversation:
Terry Hanley, lay missionary who has spent nearly 15 years in the field - Happy
to ‘spend rest of my life in Africa’
What
is peace like?
Religion
test upsurge
Malouf
on campus
Ministry
of Jesus to the sick and dying
‘Father,
this is your life’
‘Priest
in residence’ honoured
Bushland
setting for Thurgoona church
Full-on
disciple of Jesus
Active
practice of faith
Requiem
Mass for ‘Bacon Priest’
Requiem Mass for ‘Bacon Priest’
A group of 19 benefactors from the Victorian country town of Myrtleford were among 300 friends and supporters of Aid to the Church in Need who attended a Requiem Mass for Fr Werenfried van Straaten at St Mary’s Cathedral.
Fr Werenfried (pictured), founder of Aid to the Church in Need, died on January 31. He was 90.
The Mass was celebrated by the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Pell. He paid tribute in his homily to the Norbetine priest, who began a campaign in 1947 to help the millions of refugees after World War II who had fled or been removed from their European homelands to Germany as a result of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements.
From this beginning Fr Werenfried, known to many as ‘the Bacon Priest’, extended his activities to help Christians and the persecuted Church behind the Iron Curtain suffering under the yoke of Communism.
Today Aid to the Church in Need raises more than $97 million dollars annually and assists the work of the Church in more than 127 countries around the world.
Phillip Collignon, national director of Aid to the Church in Need in Australia, said: “It was very moving to know that some of our loyal benefactors had travelled from as far afield as South Australia, Victoria and far North Queensland to attend the Requiem Mass to pray for our beloved founder.”