Europe

For ACN, aid for the Church in Europe in 2023 was primarily focused on addressing the impacts of the war in Ukraine. In the second year of the war, our organisation continued to provide massive support to the local Church in caring for refugees and traumatised people and maintaining pastoral care. We were able to provide assistance with a total of 15.9 million euros. It is foreseeable that a good deal of help will still be needed in the coming years – not only for reconstruction, but also and above all for the spiritual healing of the people.

But it is not only in Ukraine that the Church urgently needs help; other regions of Europe are also in need. Over the past few years of the pandemic, many religious communities were already increasingly reliant on financial support, but new burdens were added during the reporting year. In particular, the sharp price increases for energy and food pushed many monasteries to their limits.

The Catholic Church continues to rely on help from abroad, particularly in places where it is a minority – for example, in the northern European diaspora, where there are very few Catholics, most of whom are migrants. There, we continue to support religious with subsistence aid and priests with Mass stipends.

After the years of the pandemic, high inflation is now putting a strain on the budgets of many monasteries.

Magda Kaczmarek, Head of Section Europe

We also fund urgently needed renovations to church buildings. During the reporting year, we were once again able to help priests and religious sisters, who look afer large areas, with the purchase of vehicles.