Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
November 28, 2001
Lack of Church ties obstacle in aiding Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (CNS) — One of the biggest hurdles for Catholic Relief Services in trying to provide help in Afghanistan is the lack of any Church institutions after years of rule by the fundamentalist Taliban, reported the bishop who chairs the agency's board of directors.
Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., told the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at its general meeting Nov. 13 that, unlike other recent emergency relief operations, "aid to Afghanistan is fraught with enormous complexity, immense operational constraints and a lack of security."
He asked the bishops to help raise the more-than-$50 million CRS will need over the next 12 to 18 months to feed and house Afghan refugees through the winter and help with post-war recovery amid unusually difficult circumstances.
First and foremost is that there is no tangible Catholic community in Afghanistan, he said. "There is no Catholic clergy or laity operating parishes or running social service institutions in that country."
In most places the Catholic agency operates, at least some sort of Church structure exists through which CRS is able to bring assistance to local populations.
CRS, the U.S. Church's overseas relief and development agency, withdrew its international staff from Afghanistan in 1999 after the Taliban government imposed so many restrictions it became impossible for the international staff to remain, Bishop Ricard said.
"We continued assistance in a more measured way through an organization run by our Afghan national staff," he said.
Also posing problems is the anti-American and anti-Christian feeling being kindled in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, he continued.
"Stirred by an effective public relations apparatus and an extremist religious fervor, men and women in both countries have been exposed to a steady barrage of rhetoric that characterizes the American intervention as an attack on Islam and on the Afghan people," Bishop Ricard said.
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