Spain

"For many of these children the Church is their only family."

Maria José Atienza-January 12, 2021-Reading time: 2 minutes

– Supernatural Missionary Childhood Day, The event, which will be held on January 17, focuses this year's campaign on the Church's work with abandoned, malnourished and witchcraft-accused children in the Yendi area (Ghana).

The director of OMP SpainJose Maria Calderon, Jose Maria CalderonIn this year dedicated to the figure of St. Joseph, the missionary childhood campaign is framed in the return of the Holy Family from Egypt to Nazareth, a way to involve children and families in the missionary work of Catholic identity. 

Msgr. Vincent Sowa Boi-Nai, Bishop of Yendi (Ghana) was the first of the guests to take the floor to explain the situation of children in his diocese.

The bishop distinguished four types of children that the Church, through the projects promoted with the help of the Pontifical Mission Societies, attends to: abused children, children with birth defects: blindness, lameness..., abandoned minors and "brilliant" children who need help to succeed in order to continue their studies. 

In the first group, Msgr. Vincent Sowa Boi-Nai, has highlighted the work of the Sisters of St. Gilda who teach mothers how to grow their own vegetables, raise goats and sheep and prepare nutritious meals for the children. 

Regarding children with birth problems, the bishop pointed out the lack of access to prenatal and perinatal care and the danger of certain traditional pseudo-medicinal practices that endanger their lives or cause them further problems and deformities. 

Another group, also mentioned by Sister Therese Stan, the second participant in the press conference, is the high number of children abandoned on the streets, some of whom are accused of being possessed after suffering, many times, from the wrong health care. 

This nun, who has taken in children accused of witchcraft in the Nazareth Home by Yendi, has narrated the harshness of many of the lives of these children who, at just a few years old, are abandoned or threatened in their own family environments.

The Nazareth Home is, for many of them, the only possibility to live and receive the necessary medical care. A work that, as she emphasizes, is carried out thanks to faith. 

A common point of all those who have presented this campaign has been to point out how the Church, through the institutions and congregations working in this fieldis, for these children, "the real and sometimes the only family they have".".

This year's Missionary Childhood Day, like the World Mission Sunday, will have a strong presence in digital channels. On the web https://infanciamisionera.es testimonies of missionaries and recipients of aid and projects that can only go ahead with the generosity of all. In addition, the way to collaborate has been facilitated, either through a donation by transfer or bizum. 

All the materials of this campaign can be downloaded from the same website so that children can be aware and participate in this work.

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