90: Stepping inside the Cathedral, it was full to bursting with young people

Episode 90 Today's guest is John Pontifex, Head of Press and Public Affairs at Aid to the Church in Need. John explains how he first heard about the charity in a talk at Sunday Mass more than 20 years ago and how inspired he was. He describes the charity's work keeping our relationship with Christ 'at the centre,' while actively supporting persecuted Christians. He describes being terrified on an early trip to post-civil-war Sudan. Echoing last week's conversation, John explains what life is like in the Holy Land today and how Aid to the Church in Need is supporting Christians and others there.

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro.  My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today.  Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good.  We are the times. I hope you feel encouraged and affirmed and sometimes challenged as I am in these conversations. Join our podcast community, get news and background information about the conversations and share your thoughts if you want to. You can get the newsletter and each episode straight to your inbox by going to allkindsofcatholic.substack.com and clicking on subscribe. It's free. That web address is in the episode notes too, and I'd love you to draw closer to our community. Thank you.

Well listeners, for Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, we've got quite a sombre episode today. Perhaps that's appropriate, but there are signs of hope. I do need to warn you there are one or two brief but quite graphic descriptions of violence, just so you know. Let's get into this conversation.

Listeners, thanks for joining the podcast today. I'm joined by a guest who is in the public eye. I'm joined by John Pontifex from Aid to the Church in Need, and we're going to have a really good conversation, partly about John's own faith, but also about the work of this organisation. Welcome, John. 

Lovely to be with you, Theresa. 

Maybe you could start us off then, if we go back in time a little bit to when you were a child. Have you been a Catholic since childhood? Are you someone that's always been a Catholic? And has your faith been important to you since childhood or is there something that happened that brought it into sharper focus? 

Yes, I have always been Catholic. I was raised Catholic. My father was very clear that all us children should be raised as Catholics. Although I didn't go to a Catholic prep school, I did go to a very Catholic secondary school, Downside School in Somerset, where I had four uncles who were monks, although many of them had died by the time I went along there, but the oldest of the monks at that time was indeed the last remaining uncle. Steeped as I was in Catholicism, you either decide you're going to accept it, endorse it, or you're going to reject it. That's not to say that it was piled on thick. This was the 80s we're talking about where the church was rethinking its approach to outreach and the way it was proposing its message was done in a less forthright way than it was in the pre-conciliar period. But on the other hand, I was very deeply affected by the life of the monks at Downside. I came to know a number of them as I was not very sporty. So I did get involved with the life of the monastery a bit more and used to attend vespers with friends and used to help with the altar serving. As a result of the engagement with the monks, it made me think about life at a more spiritual level. I was very much affected by what you might call the monastic rhythm, the way in which the day begins with prayer and the prayer operates at two levels, both at a formal level whereby there are set prayers conducted in a set way. And then running alongside, an interior life of prayer -and the two inform one another. I mean, I did consider a call to the priesthood. I didn't in any event do that. I trained as a journalist, worked at a local newspaper. One Sunday at Mass, I heard an appeal from Aid to the Church in Need and I thought this sounds interesting and sent in my CV. There was a vacancy coming up and so I was able to apply and indeed got the position. And here we are 23 and a half years later. 

Thank you for setting the scene there. I'm struck that not many people have got many uncles who are monks. Sometimes people have got one relative who's among the clergy somewhere. But I'm really interested in what you said about prayer there because that just casts a new bit of understanding onto - just the last few guests I've had, we've talked about some people who have really liked praying in their own words and other people like more formal prayers. I think you've explained really well there that these two things are alongside each other in some ways, that actually there is a whole interior prayer going on alongside the formal prayers. And I think sometimes people can go a long way in the church without realising that there is this interior prayer going on for many people around them. 

That's true Theresa. 

Thank you for shedding some light on that. That's great. So, Aid to the Church in Need then. Tell us a little bit about that organisation then and what was it that sounded good to you at the beginning there? 

That speech that I heard at the end of Mass set out Aid to the Church in Need as unashamedly faith-centred in a situation in a context in the West and in the UK perhaps particularly where people tend to downplay, particularly in the Christian tradition, what you might call the faith content and use it more as a platform for promoting solutions, be they social, be they political, be they  ideological. It suggests that the faith in itself has limited value. Only does it have value when it converts into some kind of action. And of course, the action is important. But if in articulating the need for action, you downplay, under develop, shall we say, the role that faith in itself plays, then I think that is an injustice, a fundamental misreading of Christianity, that at the centre of it all is our relationship with Christ.  Nothing can happen without that relationship. As St. Paul puts it very well, you know, like a bell clanging - or the essence is that relationship with Christ who came to save us, who loves us, and who loves us for being who we are, who we are as individuals and as a community. Aid to the Church in Need is very clear about that. It's about promoting the life of the Church in its fullness and recognising that catechism,  formation, and the sacraments are key. There's a need, certainly in the recent past, if not right now, to emphasise that. Aid to the Church in Need has a focus, a spirituality that centres on the price to be paid for being Christian. If you're placed as an individual in some of the countries which I've visited. You're placed with a very difficult situation whereby, you know, it's going to be easier for you if you either downplay or indeed renounce your Christianity as opposed to standing up for your faith and paying a heavy price. The nature of persecution, of oppression, of discrimination is layered and complex. It's rare that somebody is attacked only because of their Christian faith. It's important the role that Aid to the Church in Need plays in counterbalancing a narrative that tends in the secular environment to downplay, to rubbish even, by implication, the role that religion plays as often a source of discrimination, of prejudice, and in a way sets the agenda against those of faith. At Aid to the Church in Need, the charity is clear in its commitment to stand up for those who are persecuted and oppressed. It stands with them and accompanies them. 

Listeners, in this next part of the conversation, John went on to share some practical examples of Aid to the Church in Need's more overarching work first. 

We look both to the community and also to the individual. In terms of the community, I started in 2006 a project called Persecuted and Forgotten which charts the nature of persecution of Christians in a select number of countries and seeks to look at the causes, look at the nature of that persecution as well as the consequences.  To shine a light on a topic in looking at the community as a whole. Whereas on the other hand we've initiated the Courage to be Christian award which highlights the unique example that any particular individual has shown in the face of great suffering. In February of last year, I went to Northwest Nigeria to the city of Sokoto and there met a catechist who was very active and thereby became quite well known in his purple cassock, which is the dress of a catechist in that area. He was targeted by an extremist who was fed up of him doing his catechist work and he stabbed him in the chest. Fortunately, the alarm was raised. This young catechist whose name is Tobias, aged 26 now, he was very close to death. The attack was very much intentional in terms of wanting to kill him. Astonishingly, Tobias responded in two ways. First, in the court when the case was heard, Tobias asked the judge if he could embrace, he could hug, the attacker with a view to forgiving him. And the second thing was that despite the fact that this was by no means the first attack, Tobias very much made a decision alongside his wife  and his children that he would continue as a catechist. Showing the example of courage and faith and perseverance and forgiveness are things that are absolutely the heart of ACN. We're very used to the Catholic community operating at the parish level and perhaps less so, but certainly there at a diocesan level. But we don't necessarily look at the Church Universal. We look to the Pope as that, but what about our brothers and sisters as Christians, as Catholics in other parts of the world? And ACN has a remarkable mission to unite the experiences of those from very different environments, in the common cause of following Christ in good times and bad and supporting one another through that solidarity. 

Thank you, John, for that overview of Aid to the Church in Need. That's really helpful. I get the literature from Aid to the Church in Need from time to time in the post and so I recognise some of the - Persecuted Not Forgotten I certainly recognise from when you launched that. I think what we were saying earlier about Christian belief being sidelined or rubbished or undermined in our society - and at the same time, it doesn't necessarily cost us very much to be a Christian. There are some environments actually in our society where it does, but you're unlikely to be stabbed because of being a Christian in Britain. It's a strange, strange murky sort of water that we're in this country when you hear about examples elsewhere where actually it can be very costly being a Christian. You mentioned not downplaying your faith in some of those places, can be very costly. It's more life and death for some people around the world, isn't it? 

Yes.

I wonder if we might talk a little bit about Israel and Palestine, examples you might have from there of the work Aid to Church in Need does, just because we've been talking about that a little bit on the podcast recently. What are you thinking about the situation Israel and Palestine?

I speak as someone who's both part of Aid to the Church in need and also a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre. So as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre and working for ACN, the suffering of Christians is of unique importance and so it should be. We recognise that the situation in the Holy Land is just so terrible and has been so difficult for so many people, especially since October the 7th. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem among other bodies has been absolutely fundamental in helping at the very least to limit the damage that's done and hopefully over time to repair and renew, knowing that the full horror of what happened in Gaza after October the 7th and which went on for so long - The situation is absolutely horrific. I mean, I remember being called up by our friends  working in the Gaza region and being told of how a tank had fired a shell at the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza City. This was the latest in a string of attacks whereby so many communities, but not least the Christian community, had suffered. And they're such a small community anyway. There they were in that compound in the Holy Family Church, and even there they weren't safe. 

Of course, many listeners may have been following what's been happening for the Holy Family Church community in Gaza quite closely. So it is good to hear directly from you, John, too, about the relationship Aid to the Church in Need have had with that community. Thank you. 

Aid to the Church in need has worked alongside the Latin Patriarchy of Jerusalem under Patriarch Cardinal Pizzaballa in providing emergency aid both to Gaza - and now we should say at this point that owing to Hamas being a blacklisted, seen as a terrorist organisation, it is impossible for a registered charity such as Aid to the Church Need to get aid directly into Gaza for fear of the money getting into the wrong hands. However, other parts - Aid to the Church in Need UK is one of 20 or more national offices, each of them raising money through the benefactors in their regions. This means that the other offices in other parts of the world are able to get aid, emergency aid, into Gaza. In the UK, our aid can go to the other work. So the other work that we provide has been both pastoral and emergency humanitarian. So on the emergency side, we provided accommodation, funded accommodation for Christians and others, who work close to the border with Gaza and who needed refuge in church buildings in Jerusalem or in the region. Hostels, schools even, opened their doors for Christian communities coming from the border with Gaza. But in the meantime, we've also been providing emergency aid directly through to Gaza, as well as providing opportunities through the Latin Patriarchate for job skills and job training for Christians in East Jerusalem and elsewhere. We're very committed as a charity to supporting the schools of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. But we also have a focus on the very many individuals and families who are urgently seeking to find out more about their Christianity and wanting to deepen their faith.  So, Aid to the Church Need is working with the diocese of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem to enable a deeper development of the faith among the young people, noting that the faith formation that such young people received has not been as good as it could have been. There's a need to focus on that. Aid to the Church in Need is working directly with catechetical programs, summer camps.  Some of them have the underlying role of trauma counselling and other forms of mental health support for people who've been, families who've been, traumatised. This catechetical work works hand in hand with the emergency support, as does our interfaith outreach. 

Well, for listeners who've been wanting to hear about interfaith work, work to build peace in this place that is sacred to people of different faiths, John went on to share some good examples for us in this next part of the conversation. 

I've been to the Holy Land and seen the work of Aid to the Church in Need in terms of the support carried out by the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, for dialogue at a grassroots level between the Jewish community and the Christian community. People of different faiths get around a table and share experiences and break down prejudice. We've supported the Al Liqa’ Center in Jerusalem, which is a study centre really bringing together Christians and Muslims, working on common themes of outreach to the poor and the marginalised but also looking more generally at sociological and other issues. And it's trying to break down the narrative that inevitably seems to lead to greater division, distrust, that unfortunately is endemic, particularly after October the 7th. And we arranged last year for Bishop William Shomali one of the auxiliary bishops in effect of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, who himself is a Bethlehemite. And I knew him 20 years ago when he was rector of the seminary in Beit Jala, the Latin Patriarchate seminary. And he spoke of the desperate struggle families and communities have been through and the scarring of the terrible violence. The two-state solution seems as far off as ever. This year we're doing our level best to concentrate on the Holy Land because now that the conflict has ebbed, shall we say, or at least ceased for the time being, this is the opportunity of maximum uplift. Aid to the Church in Need UK is prioritising the Holy Land as one of three key areas of focus. We're hoping to have visits from leading figures from within the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem who can share their story, enliven engagement, move on from a situation of despair, which seems to be all-encompassing, towards a situation of hope and a greater development of the relations between the two communities. Because one of the greatest losses has been the absence of pilgrims. In Jerusalem, in Bethlehem, Galilee, that whole area, the Christian communities in particular, are bereft because they relied on such visitors for their income. The families who are woodcarvers making their olive wood cribs, rosaries, crosses and other sacred items. The taxi drivers and the shopkeepers and hoteliers and restaurant owners. And their problems are compounded by the myriad, it would seem, of checkpoints, often ad interim checkpoints that have sprung up. It's very difficult for people to just get about, even though Bethlehem is five miles away from Jerusalem. Travelling from one to the other, particularly if you don't have a permit, is impossible. The path to peace can only be pursued when people can move away from endemic poverty, which in itself feeds discord, sharpens this sense of resentment, disenfranchisation, and leads more disaffected youth towards the path of extremists. 

Thank you, John. That's very rich. First of all, it was good to hear from you too about the impact of a loss of pilgrims because that chimes with last week's conversation, listeners may remember, with Mike. The beginning of our conversation where you mentioned that for Aid to the Church in Need, what drew you was this organisation where faith is at the centre. And I think you've demonstrated really well how having faith at the centre doesn't mean inaction, that actually there's lots of action that the organisation is able to do, which is really beneficial while keeping faith at the centre, so we can see what that looks like. I feel very moved by those examples of this very rich work and I can hear a great deal of experience there and relationships built over many years and that is so helpful in these very complex situations. Now I would like to talk about the principle of freedom of religion and belief in a bit more detail because I know that's something Aid to the Church in Need is really involved with but just before that I wonder if we might just link back to your own faith a little bit. I'm wondering what effect this has on your faith, this meeting people in many different, very, very difficult situations around the world. You obviously travel quite a lot. You meet people whose witness to their faith puts their lives in danger or leads to discrimination and poverty and so on, as you’re saying. Is there an impact on your own faith then, on a sort of day-to-day, you and your relationship with God way of thinking about it? 

Yeah, well, I have the job, the responsibility of interviewing survivors of persecution. When I go to places like Pakistan or Nigeria. I've been to Sudan on a number of occasions. China or Ethiopia, even Eritrea. Everywhere I've gone, my role has been just to get talking with people, hear their stories. Often their stories involve terrible suffering. The question is the impact that that has on the individual and what is their faith response. In 2004, I travelled to Sudan and this was the end of the civil war that had raged within Sudan and which ultimately led to the separation, the secession of the south of Sudan from what now is just called Sudan. I took a plane and landed in this town called Wau, which had been completely bombed to smithereens and there was little left of the place. We went to the church which somehow had survived the bombing.  I was in my late 20s, was to be honest, was terrified. I’m thinking, Why am I here? What's going to happen? Everybody I seemed to encounter was dressed in military outfits. There seemed to be nobody around. Was I safe? What if I got ill with some terrible food poisoning or worse? What if I was kidnapped? You know, all these things can happen. And I remember walking into this Cathedral of Wau. I wouldn't have known it as I approached the church because it was so silent. There seemed to be no sign of life as you approached the church. But stepping inside, it was full to bursting with young people. It was so full that there were people crouching in the corners, there were people blocking up the gangways, the aisles, and you had to almost step over people to get in. And yet they were so silent. Now they had learned silence in response to the threat of bombardment. But there seemed to be another reason for the silence and that was - together they were in prayer. They were waiting for the Mass to begin. We've all been into packed churches and expect to hear crying babies or people shuffling around. But in this place, there was this stillness.  I remember being really powerfully struck by that. In the midst of this chaos, this suffering, this sense of loss, there was this still point in the storm. And it wasn't a silence of trepidation, of fear. It was a silence of communion through simply being together. I found that when you spoke to people, this sense of shared experience through faith is deeply empowering and consoling. I spoke later that day to a Dominican sister. She was only in her twenties.  She described how there had been terrible attacks, violence, and on one occasion, her white habit had been splattered with blood when somebody not far away from her was attacked. And I asked her then what her faith meant to her because, you know, she was a young woman, she could have done anything with her life. And yet there she was in this convent. She explained that her faith was centred on the crucified Christ, that the mystery of his passion, his death, horrific circumstances. She identified more, it seemed, with the horror of the crucifixion than perhaps you or I would, because it resonated with her own experience. Our Lord plunged the depths of suffering, so indeed his resurrection is all the more remarkable and all the more miraculous. For her, it made sense because He was able to identify so personally with the suffering that people like her and more particularly those around her had been through. She was about my age, this religious sister, and I was struck by the ease with which she spoke about this, the openness. She'd clearly processed this at a spiritual level. Her calm, her sense of faith, calmed me as I was feeling anxious, sat there in this strange place, not knowing what the day would bring.

That's very moving.  I think you're right. That an example of that sister making a link to the crucifixion is something that we perhaps do less in our, in our calmer society where it is much easier to be a Christian. It's going to stay with me actually. Thank you. If we may talk about this principle then of freedom of religion and belief. And I think real examples are helpful because it can sound like a sort of legal concept, can't it? And it sometimes sounds to me a bit begrudging that, um you know, Oh yes, we'll let people be free to practice their weird religion and believe their strange beliefs. But actually it's a principle that helps people, I don't want to say ‘tolerate,’ because I think that also sounds quite begrudging, but helps people recognise that the practice of our religion, our belief, is fundamental to us as people and that just as I want to be free to practice my faith, I must recognise that other people want to be free to practice their faith. That's where I'm at with it. It's a bit fudged, you can see, and a bit kind of homemade, my understanding of this principle. So tell us a bit more about what it means in practice and how Aid to the Church in Need supports this. 

Yeah, so what this is about, what is called Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 sets out the precept of religious freedom as the freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The right to convert, the right to manifest your religion in private, in public, by yourself or with others. In getting behind this precept, Aid to the Church in Need is uniting with the Church in its own understanding of what religious freedom means as set out in Dignitatis Humanae, in subsequent writings and statements made by the Church, and its Catholic Social Teaching points  directly to on the one hand, the right of the individual to promote their beliefs as well as to celebrate them themselves, but protects the right of the person listening to that promotion of faith to say, Well, maybe not for me. Right cannot be might. The individual is gifted with conscience. We remember how Our Lord never forced his will on anyone. His is always an invitation, free will is at the heart of the Catholic mindset. Indeed the wider Christian mindset. We have a very clear sense of it in terms of it's working out in our sense of society and of community. In response to these terrible acts of persecution that we've witnessed in so many parts of the world, it's not enough just to provide the church that's been burnt down, here we are rebuilding it. It's not enough simply to take people away from a place of persecution and put them somewhere safe so that one day they might return. All of these solutions whilst good, they tackle a problem at a surface level and what's needed is to go to the root causes and address those root causes. This is why Aid to the Church in Need has identified very strongly with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And why we have launched a petition, a global petition, which is calling for the full enforcement of Article 18, so that nation states take greater responsibility for ensuring that all those individuals who in any way offend or undermine or deny the right of religious freedom are stopped in their tracks. We're not asking as Christians, and we can never ask, for preferential treatment. We're simply asking that all those who live out their faith in accordance with the rule of law and in accordance with the precepts of peace are allowed to do so. As Christians, we recognise that as a right for all, not a right for the few. When we launched the petition, not long before Christmas, there was a private audience with Pope Leo and a statement that he made at the time was then released. And in it, he makes the statement that religious freedom cannot be seen as a privilege for the few, it has to be a right for all. There was implicit support thereby from the Holy Father for this call. So we invite people, anyone listening, to simply Google ACN Article 18 and you will find our petition.  We are planning to submit this petition both at UN level but also to key nation states. And I was speaking only last week to a priest in Pakistan. And this priest I visited two or three years back has worked night and day for individuals, most of them Christian, who are accused of blasphemy under a false pretext, either for means of extortion or showing an individual being able to get their way, some vendetta or something of that nature that explains these false accusations. He had come across our petition and he said, We need this petition for our country because our Christian community is at direct risk of false charges being brought against our communities. We're discriminated in the workplace in schools. We're often only allowed to do the most menial jobs. There's high rates of women and girls who are from religious minorities, not least Christian, abducted, forcibly converted and forced to marry the very person who's abducted them often. Article 18 is sadly, as Lord Alton, who's given a video message in support of our campaign only last week, this precept, Article 18, is observed as he would put it, in the breach. We want to see it observed in full. We're inviting everyone to sign the petition, make their voice count. 

That's wonderful to hear about. And for listeners, I'll put a link to the petition and to the work of ACN in the episode notes so you can find it easily there. We're going to bring the conversation to an end now, John. I'm so grateful for your time today. There's something wonderful about belonging to a Catholic community where there are people who understand these global issues at the level that you do and are able to share it with us. It's wonderful to know that Pope Leo is also thinking about these issues on behalf of the church and making statements. It's wonderful to think that Catholic people and the values that we believe in because of our faith are important for everybody. It's wonderful to hear that being expressed more clearly than I'm able to do, obviously.  So I'm really grateful that you found some time to join us today. I think there's a lot there for listeners to absorb. Thank you so much.

It's been lovely to be with you, Theresa.  

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time.  I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday and you can follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it.  You can also follow us on social media @kindsofCatholic and remember if you connect with us on Substack you can comment on episodes and share your thoughts and be part of the dialogue there. Until the next time.