OTTAWA - The Catholic Near East Welfare Association of Canada has received a $226,630 grant from the federal Office for Religious Freedom to combat religious persecution in parts of Ukraine. 

Catholic actor and evangelist Elisa Lollino looks out from the stage to find silence and stillness has descended upon her audience. 

OTTAWA - The Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) has put out an urgent plea for help aiding Iraqi Christians targeted in a “brutal civil war.”

The old city of Jerusalem may seem like a great place to visit or make a pilgrimage to, but it actually comes with its share of social problems, according to Carl Hétu.

“There’s a lot of poverty, a lot of school dropouts, a lot of drugs, alcohol, violence and theft within the old city,” said Hétu, the Canadian national director of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, an organization that helps support the pastoral mission and institutions of the Catholic Church in the Mideast.

OTTAWA - The Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) is monitoring the plight of Christians in Syria and is poised to help should their position deteriorate.

CNEWA Canada national secretary Carl Hétu said the agency is carefully sifting reports from the Syria, especially in the city of Homs, a key battleground between Syrian and rebel forces. Many Christians live in Homs, Hétu said, and many have fled the city because of the shelling.  

“We heard some reports that people were actually forced to leave,” whether by forces supporting the Assad government or rebel forces, he said. “Some say it was Islamists. It’s not clear. There are different stories coming out.”

CNEWA, as well as Caritas Lebanon and the Islam Relief Fund of Canada, is accepting donations to help Syrian refugees, Hetu said.

For more information, see www.cnewa.ca.

OTTAWA - The violence plaguing Syria has forced the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) to put many of its projects there on hold, even though Christians so far do not seem to have been specifically targeted.

But support for Iraqi Christians who fled to Iraq, many of whom struggle to survive in the slums of Damascus, is still ongoing, said CNEWA Canada national director Carl Hétu.