By CISA
BUKAVU, JUNE 26, 2020 (CISA)-The Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has donated £108,000 (€120,000) to 69 Catholic sisters’ communities in the ecclesiastical province of Bukavu to support their service amid the covid-19 pandemic.
“As Covid-19 restrictions mean Sisters have lost their means of financial support, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is providing 69 communities serving in the ecclesiastical province of Bukavu with a £108,000 (€120,000) aid package,” reported ACN on June 22.
“While all of the non-governmental organisations have fled because of the ongoing conflict, the Church and in particular the religious are still there, close to the most severely disadvantaged groups, like good souls, unrecognized but fully in the spirit of Mother Teresa,” said Christine du Coudray, ACN head of DRC projects.
The charity pledged to help Sisters ministering to a region suffering from ethnic conflict, natural disasters and attacks by militia groups, following an appeal from Archbishop François-Xavier Maroy of Bukavu.
Sisters often depend on work in parishes and schools to support themselves but the Church has had to shut them down to tackle the spread of the coronavirus.
“Medical workers, including many religious Sisters, are paid according to the number of patients they treat – but with people reluctant to go to the hospitals, fearing they will contract COVID-19, Sisters have suffered drastic cuts to, or even a complete loss of, their income,” reports ACN.
The ACN aid package helping 464 Sisters, comes on top of Mass stipends supporting 289 priests in the country.
As of June 26 there were 6411 confirmed cases of Covid-19, 885 recoveries and 130 deaths from the virus in the DRC.
