Pakistani Christians face discrimination, and Christian children Receive no Christian education in school. For this reason, ACN has helped establish 5 Sunday schools to educate Christians.

By ACN Staff

The Holy Spirit parish, based in Sangla Hill, is the largest parish in the Archdiocese of Lahore. It includes a total of 67 villages, many of them far from the parish centre.

And so the parish priest, Father Akmal Patras was determined to give an opportunity also to those Catholic children living further away so that they too could take part in the catechetical and Bible study sessions.

Thanks to the generosity of our benefactors, we were able to contribute €11,500 so that a Sunday school programme could be established in five of these villages. All in all some 250 children, aged between 7 and 15, now have the opportunity to get to know the Scriptures and the Catholic Faith.

This was crucially important since, as Father Akmal explains, in Pakistani state schools, while theoretically offering a choice between Islamic religious instruction and a study of general ethics, in practice offer next to nothing in the way of such ethics. Hence in reality, Christian children also have to follow Islamic religious instruction in order to obtain the points needed to be able to advance to the next level. In any case, even if ethics were offered as an alternative subject, this would not address the needs of the Catholic pupils since it would do nothing to help them learn more about their Catholic faith. Besides, in the standard Pakistani school textbooks for almost every subject, all kinds of false information is spread about the religious minorities, and the Christian pupils – just like the members of other minorities – regularly have to face prejudice and often even hatred on the part of their teachers and fellow pupils. “Many of the Christian children feel inferior, intimidated and end up abandoning school”, Father Akmal explains. And so it helps Christian pupils to grow in self-confidence if they know their faith well and can respond effectively to the prejudices and provocative questions they face.

Almost all the parents of Christian children are illiterate and so cannot teach their children the knowledge of the faith they need. Hence Sunday schools are vital in helping to strengthen their faith and Christian identity. Our heartfelt thanks to all of you for your help. May God reward you!