[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to a new edition of our diocesan podcast, Big City Catholics, with Bishop Robert Brennan, the Diocesan Bishop of Brooklyn, serving in Brooklyn and Queens, and myself, Father Christopher Henry. Here at St. John Mark Parish today we're joined by Edward Clancy, who's the director of Outreach for Aid to the Church in Need, a beautiful organization that does so much to help Christians all through the world, especially in war torn areas, and bringing the gospel message to priests, seminarians, to the faithful all over the world. We have a great honor to have you today in our podcast to talk about this upcoming Sunday, a petition to assist your mission, the mission of the Aid to the Church in Need. But we'll begin in prayer. I found a prayer from Aid to the Church in Need, which is quite a beautiful one, as we ask God's mercy upon us all, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear Lord, please do not leave me. How many times you have heard this from your children in need, from those persecuted because of their faith in you. Faithful who have lost their lives, Christians who have lost their homes, families who have lost everything.
Please remain at their sides in their moments of fear and uncertainty. Please grant them the peace only you can give them and give me the gifts I need to help them grow in hope. Amen.
Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Bishop, it's good to be back with you today.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: It's good to be back. We left off last week talking about vocations, our own vocations, and some of the events recently and upcoming. I ended up having the Vocation retreat. We had a cabin at 50 and we were out in Huntington at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception. It was a great weekend. It was a great weekend. These guys were serious and prayerful. It was really uplifting to be able to spend some time with them over the weekend. And then of course, we saw each other at the Sligo dinner and celebrated St. Patrick's Day this week.
But now we get deeper into these weeks of Lent. So this fifth Sunday of Lent gets us seriously into the Gospel.
It also brings us to the reality of the situation on earth right now. And the reality is many, many people are persecuted for their faith. They carry the cross of Christ here and now.
So we're very pleased to welcome Ed Clancy from the Aid to the Church in Need as we get into an awareness week coming up. Hello Ed, how are you?
[00:02:45] Speaker C: I'm doing well, Bishop. It's good to be with you and be able to speak about this serious topic.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us this week. You're going to be Helping us here to observe a week. And also in New York, you'll be with Archbishop Hicks in New York on Sunday at the 10:15 Mass.
And you'll be with me at Mass at 1:00 clock at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in Queens. And we'll be praying for the Church in Need, for the persecuted church. Tell me first a little bit about it, Aid to the Church in Need. And then let's talk about this particular weekend.
[00:03:18] Speaker C: Sure. Aid to the Church need was founded as a direct response to the call of Pope Pius request to the Church to assist Christians who were Catholics especially who were pushed back into Germany after World War II. And just historically it was a very difficult time for Germany to accept many emigres, German speaking citizens of other countries.
And in response to that, the organization was started to help the Church in places like war torn Germany. And since the 1950s it's expanded into Eastern Europe and then later into Africa, South America. And now we serve in over 110 countries each year. We have anywhere from 5 to 12,000 projects during any one year. And it really depends on how you look at a project. It could be as small as a mass stipend, for example, or as great as rebuilding some of the churches in Iraq and Syria and other places that were destroyed during war or by Islamic extremists. And so this week our hope is for us to be aware of those people who live the way of the cross every day. It's the week before Palm Sunday, Passion Sunday, when there's the, the reading of the gospel that tells us the full story of Christ's passion.
Unfortunately, there's brothers and sisters in Christ around the world who live that every day. They carry the cross, which is their faith through their lives and they're abused because of it.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: It really is eye opening because temptation is to think that, oh, the world is a much better place than it used to be. Oh, those years that passed. And you think of the horrors of the Second World War and you think of the early centuries of the church, but really the 20th and now the 21st centuries have been terrible centuries for martyrdom.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: Yeah. And in fact, St. John Paul II called the 20th century the century of martyrs. It's good to speak of numbers, but oftentimes you get lost in numbers. But millions of people who died for their faith during the 20th century, and unfortunately the 21st century is starting with just as much vigor in that area as existed in the 21st century. I mean, we've spoken briefly about the situation in Nigeria in the past and Nigeria is a country with 50,000 Christians killed in the last 10 years for their faith. And now we see places like the Middle east, which, you know, was. Was the beginning of Christianity. Iraq, for example. Iraq was a country that was between 15 and 20% Christian 100 years ago. Now it's less than 2. You know, what better example is there than Bethlehem? Bethlehem is the birthplace of Christ, and it was the, you know, the nascent church. At the very beginning, Christian community existed in a town that was really not much of a town.
And now it's. It's a town with less than 2% of the population being Christian.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: I was with Bishop Mansour, the Maronite Catholic bishop. He is here in Brooklyn. He has, of course, close ties with Lebanon. And he was telling me recently that they've gone, Christians being two thirds of the population, to being a third of the population in Lebanon. As you see some of these terror organizations at work, it really is devastating.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: Yeah. And Christianity in many of these places faces a multitude of forces against them. I mean, one thing is just a demographic plunge, that when they're very low in numbers, it's hard for them to occupy any presence to protect themselves and do things that you consider normal in society. Then you add to that oftentimes in places like the Middle east and Lebanon, the prime example, it was like the economic hub of the Middle east for a very long time. Banking center, industry, et cetera, tourism. I mean, Beirut was considered the Paris of the Middle East. And, you know, and now it's. It's a. It's a shambles of what it used to be. I mean, it's still, in a sense, a great city, but it's not anywhere it was a hundred years ago. But the thing is that Christians face, you know, the challenges of society. They live in places where they're minorities, and because of that, they are ostracized. And then you get, you know, Christian children who go to among the very best schools in the region or best schools in the world, and often have to leave their native countries to go somewhere else to really have gainful employment. You know, we've spoken to some of our projects in Africa, for example, in Sudan, you know, women with two master's degrees, degrees in counseling and teaching and, you know, higher education, sweeping a shop floor and being treated. Treated like a slave because that's the only thing she can do to help to provide for her family in the Middle East. One of the greatest pushers of Christians out of the Middle east is the fact that they can't really Say to themselves, do I have a future as a family, as a Christian in this world? But AIDS at a church need has essentially understood that our role is to support the church and to keep that church alive.
And in cases like Lebanon, you mentioned the diminishment of the population.
I mean, Lebanon is a country that by all accounts should be able to provide for itself, but it receives something like 30% of all of the aid we send to them, at least. And it's mainly because of these situations. Both Lebanon and Syria are very interrelated. And there, for example, Catholic school teachers in Lebanon and Syria do not receive enough salary to pay for one tank of gas, which they need to get back and forth to school, to their jobs. And they often have to work three jobs just to support their family.
So what the church does and what we've done is we've helped the church as part of the community to provide family support. Sometimes it's stipends, but more importantly, if providing a safe haven for children, after school programs, tutoring programs, different kind of social activities so parents can work two or three jobs each and know that their children are at school, they're at a safe place, they're getting a meal, those, those little things that we take for granted that. That are done by the church. Another example is Lebanon. Up in the northeast, northeastern part of Lebanon, there are few schools run by the Catholic Church that are a majority Muslim schools. In other words, the student population is more Muslim than Christian. And in those places, for example, Tripoli, where I think it's like 70%, the Muslims and the Christians get along very well together because of this relationship. There's so many of these familial bonds that get built up. You know, friends and playing soccer together or interacting in scouts and all of these different things that helped form friendships to the point where they have a place to go, they have some protection. I mean, it's not perfect, but it certainly helps to build a network of support from underneath. And the church remains. That's the very important thing. The church remains. Recently, a priest was killed in Lebanon because he refused to leave. He was told to leave, he refused to. He stayed. And there was a missile. The missile unfortunately killed him. And I think a worker in the church and there were two men who, you know, could have left, but they didn't. And we see that throughout the world where nuns and priests and brothers remain, they don't run when. When it gets dangerous.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Interestingly, Ed, this weekend, this fifth Sunday, and this particular week ahead, March 22nd to the 29th, within your organization, within aid to the church in need is called courage and faith within week. And that's truly, I think as you're describing that these examples, these witnesses, truly courageous, that come from a grace of God obviously more than from their own self courage. But we're able to support you and support that mission in keeping that courage. And a lack of fear, thanks be to God in their lives is a great, great thing. Ed, you know, you mentioned we can get caught up in the numbers, but I do, I do love the numbers because they're numbers that we should be very proud of to date. Can you tell us a little bit about how many countries aid to the church in need works in and some of the data statistics of your organization?
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:11:20] Speaker C: We raise all individual donors. We don't get government support in any of our countries. And that's a policy of the organization not to create any sort of relationship with governments or to beholden to anybody other than, you know, the gospel and our donors to live according to as Christ would want us. And we raise about $150 million in a year and something like 78% of that goes directly to projects in each year. And then the rest of it is, you know, other areas of work that need to get done. For example, we have an office in Lebanon and the people remain there. We have to pay their salaries. We have to take care of them in places again where you and I might visit and, and tell a story when we get home. But they live it every day and you know, their power outages, you know, or for example, a priest that we work with in Syria says, well, it was a good week last week we had five hours of power so they could charge their phones. So I mean, for the whole week they had five hours of power. Wow. And that's, and that's just, you know, a normal situation for them now.
And the other thing is, for example, you know, you were just speaking about vocations and that's an area that we are. I, you know, I have to be very proud of the organization that we support so many seminarians. And I think there's a story of courage that maybe is exemplary in this area. About seven years ago, a young seminarian, 18 year old Nigerian Michael Enadi, was abducted from his seminary along with three brother seminarians. And they were abused over the span of a week or two. And eventually they were released. You know, ransoms were paid to release them with the exception of Michael and Otti. And it turned out that he was executed. And the reason was he refused to stop praying. He refused to stop praying before meals and proclaiming Christ when speaking to his captors, even, even as they were abusing him. And the final straw was when the man who executed him demanded that he stop using the name of Christ. And he said, well, you should know Christ and you have to ask him for forgiveness, otherwise you're going to be damned.
And because of that, he was shot and killed. So the man was captured about 10 days later. I think it was like mid February. So this happened in January.
And he said he never met a braver man in his life. Was an 18 year old boy who was really, you know, the example of the courage of martyrs that we, that we really should learn from. And in fact, in Nigeria, where they essentially don't really need inspiration for vocations, there are hundreds of new vocations who say that they were inspired by the courage that Michael and Nadi displayed and they want to live that courageous life as priests in the church. And obviously I don't have to tell the two of you, but without, without the priesthood, there isn't sacraments, there isn't the Eucharist, there isn't the focus of the church. And in fact, in many of these places they go after priests because the priest is the central point of courage or you know, faith in that if a priest dies or is abducted, they will abandon the towns because if there's no church, then there's no community for them. They'll go somewhere else.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: You know, and it hits close to home for us here in Brooklyn and in Queens, because in many of these countries that we speak about in terms of the persecuted church, our parishioners come from those countries. We have many, take Nigeria, we have many Nigerian parishioners here in Brooklyn and Queens. And many of those people have family back in Nigeria or in all of these other countries. The reality of the persecuted church is something that means something to us, that hits us close to home. How about in Latin America? I mean, I've been hearing more stories about persecuted church in Latin America.
[00:15:10] Speaker C: Well, Latin America is in a sense a little bit more difficult, difficult to speak of, you know, sort of one opponent, if you will. It's not radical Islam, but there it is much more authoritarian. Governments and criminals who go after, you know, priests, the church and you know, the organizations involved with the church. I mean, for example, the, the nation that has led the world and the number of priests who are killed is Mexico. And oftentimes it's because, you know, they stand between the cartels and the people or, you know, again, like Michael Andati, they are not willing to give up their role as, as leader and to stand up and speak when it needs to be spoken. I mean, Nicaragua is another example where there's a few bishops who have either been expelled or imprisoned, and there's dozens, if not hundreds of people that have been missing that are in prisons and being abused because they were part of the Catholic Church, you know, and then, then we can add on to that the layers of mismanagement and government neglect, and the Church has to fill in.
Even the Pope comes from an area where he. He was living, you know, and existing on a very meager existence because he was with people who were, you know, on the fringe. They weren't in the central part of the. Of the culture or society. And yet that's where the church is. That's exactly where the Church is. The last command Christ gave us was to go and baptize, you know, all four corners of the earth, and they're there. And that's. That's very important for us. And that's why when people ask, you know, what does pastoral mean? The pastoral, you know, coming from the, you know, the shepherd taking care of the sheep means just exactly that. You have to get your hands and feet dirty. You're going to have to go out among the sheep, and you're going to have to go out and protect them against the wolves and the lions and everything else and put your body in between them and, you know, the, the innocent.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Some great, great stories of courage and examples, if you will, of both faith and courage. So we're grateful for that. Tell me a little bit about this weekend coming up.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: Sure. The idea is, during Lent, we honor those who have martyred themselves. So if you either, you know, go to our website and ask for information, or you go to either St. Patrick's 10:15 Mass or the 1 o' clock Mass at our Lady Queen of Martyrs in Forest Hills, you get the opportunity of getting a brochure, and in it it's the list of priests and nuns who have lost their lives because they serve the church in one of these places. And also, unfortunately, groups where we don't have the names, you know, 20 people here, 100 there who died. One of the things that we've done is we've started to ask some of the places where these things happen. For example, Nigeria, to try to keep track of the names.
Because, Father, as you said, the numbers are impressive. But what's more impressive is to know that there's souls. You know, the the 120 people that get killed in a, in a town in, in Mozambique or Nigeria, each one of those was a person and each one of those might have been a whole family. I mean, literally whole families extinguished where they're gone. There's no, there's no remnant of them ever to be seen. And that's something that not only we should be aware of, but we certainly should be praying for them.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: So we take this week to pray in a very direct way. And it is powerful to put names together with stories because we're not just speaking of some hypothetical or group kind of thought, but some very real individuals, people who gave their lives for the sake of the gospel.
In the current day, it's sometimes unthinkable, but it's really happening.
[00:18:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And even with the current situation in Iran, a country that has a very small Christian community, you have to realize that Christianity was there right after Christ preached the gospel. I mean, literally within, within days, if not. I know Archbishop Jean Bart, the Bishop emeritus of Aleppo, Syria, said that, you know, when he visits places, he realizes that he can bring relics just by bringing dust on his shoes, because within they were within two days walk of, or three days walk of where Peter proclaimed the gospel on Pentecost Sunday.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Well, I appreciate your bringing us the important news of what's happening in the world. And we last just observed this week as part of our Lenten pilgrimage when we were at Saint Rose of Lemur in Brooklyn. This year, we look forward to commemorating the Christian martyrs during our Sunday mass at Our Lady Queen of martyrs. That's at 1 o' clock in Forest Hills. You know, they title Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. You think of the martyrs and Mary watching over them. You think of the early North American martyrs. The shrine up in Aurisville is dedicated Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, commemorating the first martyrs here in North America. So realizing that our church has been built on the witness of the martyrs and continues to stand firm in a world that can sometimes be very difficult, we also pray for peace.
We pray for peace in the world, peace in the Middle East. Boy, the world is in need of so much healing. And as we get closer to the reality of Holy Week, reflect on the suffering of Christ, we also look forward to that message of hope in his resurrection.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Amen. I echo Bishop, I echo his remarks and thanking you, Ed, for being here and shedding more light on, on the great work of aid to the church in need. Something that struck me, you know, before we wrap up with a prayer is just your. The work that aid to the church in need does in creating and publishing the children's Bible. I thought that was really stunning in so many different languages throughout the world. And why that strikes me is because it's an investment and a continued care and concern for the youth and for the next generation. And it's just as a true, true sign of hope. Even in the midst of this chaos and in the midst of all that, of the sorrows and struggles, we know that Jesus Christ stands firm. His faith stands firm. And we are investing in these youth so that they can spread that message and not lose hope and lose faith. So thank you for the work that you all do, and we certainly will unite in prayer and in support aid to the church in need. For those who would like more information, you can find it
[email protected] and there's resources there about the Courage and Faith Week. There's ways in which you can donate, you can offer a Mass and you can unite in prayer. Ed, can you just tell our viewers that beautiful thought of how many masses are offered each day?
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Sure. Every 17 seconds, a mass is being offered for one of our benefactors. And you know, the mass stipend is a way to keep these communities alive because we've heard stories where the stipends that a priest received not only helps him, but the family who helps him at the parish and helps him be able to provide help to the people in the community. And in regards to the child's Bible, we've heard that in some languages it's the only printed book that there are literally languages where the child's Bible was the only printed book in that language. So it's a pretty impressive feat done by the organization for these many years.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Well, thank you again, Edward Clancy. Thanks to you for joining us today. Bishop. Perhaps you could close with a prayer
[00:22:41] Speaker B: and I echo those. Thanks, Edward. I look forward to being with you on Sunday.
Let us pray. Almost high and glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart. Give me right faith, certain hope, perfect love and deep humility.
O Lord, give me sense and discernment in order to carry out your true and holy will.
May almighty God bless you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Amen. Thanks one and all for joining us again this week, and we hope that you'll join us in the weeks to come. God bless
[00:23:18] Speaker C: Sam.
