ACN supports religious sisters and missionaries all over the world, including in the Diocese of Añatuya in Argentina.

By ACN Staff

Añatuya is one of the poorest dioceses in Argentina, and most of its population of barely 200,000 souls live widely scattered across an area almost the size of the Republic of Ireland. The roads are poor, the people have little access to formal education or medical care.

There are 81 religious sisters, two brothers and seven lay missionaries working in the diocese. Some of them are running old people’s homes, children’s homes and soup kitchens, or caring for the disabled, while others work in parishes where there is no priest. Often they have to travel long distances – frequently on bicycles.

Sister Maria Luján of the Misioneras de Jesús Verbo y Víctima, or “Missionaries of Jesus, Word and Victim”, one of the congregations working in the diocese, reports: “we are running 20 mission centres, or Parajes, some up to 56 km away. We reach them via unmade roads, often made virtually impassable not only in rainy weather on account of the slimy mud, but also in dry weather when the soft earth is like sand dunes.”

“The people living in these “Parajes” are generally in communities of somewhere between 10 and 70 families, large families with many children. They tend to be thinly scattered, since they are livestock herders and let their goats roam widely across the countryside.

We support the people spiritually, making house visits, giving religious instruction, caring for the elderly and the sick and taking care of the ethical and moral upbringing of the children and young people, as well as organising Word Liturgies. We also run a basic field hospital and teach sewing and other handicrafts. We are constantly trying to ease the needs that we see in the families.”

ACN regularly helps the religious and lay missionaries in the Diocese of Añatuya and we are planning to do so again this year, with €33,000, so that they can continue their precious and dedicated ministry among the people.