Rome (Fides Service) - From 16 to 20 September Aid to the Church in Need will hold an International Pilgrimage in Poland. For five days benefactors from 16 European countries, from North and South America and Australia will visit and pray at places «where God’s presence is felt to be especially near, to ask the Mother of Mercy to show us the path to reconciliation», said Father Joaqìn Allende-Luco, international ecclesiastical Assistant of the organisation founded in 1947 by Father Werenfried van Straaten in aid of the Church which suffered and was in need.
Among the most significant stops, Jasna Góra, where people venerate the Black Madonna, and the city of Nowa Huta, near Krakow where in the 1970s thanks to support from Aid to the Church in Need the famous church dedicated to the “Mother of God” was built. The church - built to oppose the authorities who wanted to make Nowa Huta a “city without God” - was built by the people of the city despite warnings and bans from the authorities of the Communist regime and the pressure of atheism. The church, which Father van Straaten used to call «an arc in the Red Sea », was built and it was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary by the then Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyła. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 15/9/2004 - Righe 14, Parole 200)