Children afflicted by hunger

Almost 5 million employed adults don’t earn enough to make a living. 3.6 million children don’t have enough food. These are the figures of poverty today in the United Kingdom. In the framework of Westminster, the leaders of all Catholic associations which every day are engaged against indigence – “the most serious form of poverty that the Country has ever known” in the words of the auxiliary bishop of Westminster John Arnold – told MPs why the English Catholic Church is truly, in the words of Pope Francis, “a field hospital after a battle”. No to mothers in prison. Selina was sentenced to several years in prison because upon her return from Spain she hid T-shirts which she hoped to sell to put together a few pounds. Her twin daughters aged eight lost their home, school friends, and their school and went to live with their grandmother Chrissie, who was became disabled after a serious form of arthritis. No social worker has helped them understand what was happening nor did anyone ensure that the grandmother received the subsidies she needs. The children are under shock and they have sleeping problems. They have been targeted by their schoolmates and have become violent. To avoid this spiral of abandonment, desperation and violence a few days ago British Caritas asked the State not to imprison mothers with children. The battle of CSAN. “Caritas social action” (CSAN) seeks to combat an ever more devious form of poverty which involves 4.7 million adults who risk being hospitalized for malnutrition. “Our pupils arrive in stainless uniforms in classes equipped with the latest technology and nobody imagines they skipped breakfast and lunch and that they are starving”, the bishop told a group of MPs gathered in the Churchill Hall. “They find it hard to concentrate, they’re nervous and angry – the prelate said – and need to eat something if we want them to watch the interactive board in which the government has invested hundreds of pounds”. Ecumenical food bank. “A few hundreds of meters from Buckingham Palace stands an ecumenical food bank run by the Methodist Church with couples that were once wealthy and which before the crisis had the courage to contract a loan. Now they have a beautiful car and a beautiful house and are faced with the option: eat or heat – namely, either buy food or pay domestic heating”, said Fr Patrick Browne, from the parish of the St. Apostles in Pimlico, which during Sunday Mass, is attended by 700 people. “Over the past ten years – the parish priest pointed out- electricity, gas, water and food products have increased but salaries remained the same. Today the average British citizen has 53thousand pound worth debts, approximately 64thousand euro. Christian Churches in the neighbourhood where the Queen lives give shelter to 15 homeless every night. During the night we try to find them a house and a job. If we manage, it’s one more person we have taken away from the streets and the evening there’s a spare place for another homeless”. Communities marked by mutual help. The Church faces the emergency acting on her strengths, since, as the director of CSAN Helen O’Brien told SIR, quoting the Pope, “it’s our opportunity to prove that we are ‘of’ the poor and ‘for’ the poor and this is our truest vocation. For our parishes it is a unique opportunity to start living again like true communities that help one another. People are available and are ready to give because the effects of poverty have never been so evident”. “Even though it must be said that aids are just a means to build, first and foremost, a friendly relationship to help people in difficulty to exit a spiral of misery”, added John Coleby, Caritas director in the archdiocese of Westminster, that includes the centre in London. Food to reach people. “There has never been a moment in history in which so many people fell in a state of poverty”, bishop Arnnold told SIR. “Poverty is the greatest challenge to the dignity of a person, but those who are indigent don’t want charity, they want to find the means of self-sustenance”. “None of us like food banks – Coleby continued – but they are a necessary evil. It’s equally true that the welfare state needs reforms because many people abuse it. As Catholics we need to use these situations to arrive to the human person and seek to recover his/her dignity”. “In my parish everyone wants to give a helping hand starting with old people who live on their own pension and savings – concluded Fr Brown -. During Mass I always say: “We have enough cereal but we need orange juice”. And people generously respond and activate themselves immediately”.