VATICAN - "Aid to the Church in Need" becomes Pontifical Foundation

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Pope Benedict XVI elevated the international Catholic charity "Aid to the Church in Need" to the status of a pontifical foundation. The headquarters of the newly created Foundation is in the State of the Vatican City, while the international office is located in Königstein, Germany. Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, was appointed President of the Foundation, who in turn appointed Johannes Freiherr Heereman von Zuydtwyck as Executive President. Rev. Martin Barta, a member of the clerical Association "Work of Jesus High Priest," is the Ecclesiastical Assistant. Benedict XVI recalled Aid to the Church in Need’s decades of service, sixty years with the Church, wherever the Church faces hardship or persecution.
The Society was founded in 1947 when Father Werenfried van Straaten, inspired by an appeal by Pope Pius XII, begins to sensitize the Belgians to help sixteen million displaced Germans - six of them Catholics –escaping from the emerging East Germany. In the following years the first projects were created that are then extended to Latin America, Asia and Africa, spreading out in the 90s to the field of ecumenism. Today, the Foundation has seventeen national secretariats - in Europe, North America, South America and Australia - and each year supports about 5000 projects for the ministry of the Church throughout the world (support for seminarians; construction or maintenance of churches, chapels and convents; formation of novices, providing transportation, subsistence). (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 13/12/2011)