FATHER Werenfried van Straaten, the founder of the international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), would have been happy to have celebrated his 100th birthday.
He was full of plans, right into old age, and even wanted to learn Russian. But this was not to be.
Instead, he died two weeks after his 90th birthday, on January 31, 2003.
But on the anniversary of his 100th birthday, the charity he founded is nonetheless more relevant than ever.
Fr Werenfried succeeded in persuading once deadly enemies to help each other and pray for each other.
For this he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
As a powerful and persuasive speaker, he moved countless people to almost reckless deeds of love, spontaneously giving him money, cars, jewellery for the poor.
He was one of the first to “discover” Mother Teresa of Calcutta in the early 1960s, when she was still virtually unknown in the West.
He was a friend and confidant of four popes and a close friend of Blessed Pope John Paul II.
A highly imaginative pioneer, he came up with an inexhaustible fund of creative ideas in his efforts to “dry the tears of God”.
It was he who dreamt up such original solutions to a series of pastoral problems as “chapels on wheels” and “floating churches”.
He had a wonderful sense of humour and a genuine love for his fellow human beings.
Yet the charity now known as ACN, which he founded and which began at Christmas 1947, was not something he had actually planned, but which simply “happened” to him.
“He promised what he did not have, and God supplied it” is the message on his little memorial cards.
Not for him the cautious logic of the business consultants, bankers and accountants – his success was due entirely to his boundless trust in God.
He saw a need and was moved to help.
Often he promised large sums of aid without even having the money available.
Yet God always helped him to make good his promises.
With a simple black hat, that was to go down in history as his “hat of millions”, Fr Werenfried managed to collect about three billion dollars during the course of his long life, while his fiery preaching touched many human hearts.
Right into old age, and even sitting in a wheelchair when he was too weak to preach, he personally took the collection with the hat in his outstretched hand.
Many of his benefactors still remember that old hat today when they make their donations.
Ever imaginative, Fr Werenfried even managed to turn this battered old hat to his advantage, tirelessly pointing out, with a twinkle, that it would be better to put in notes, as coins might fall through the holes.
So what was the secret of Fr Werenfried’s success?
For one thing, he himself was deeply moved by what he had witnessed with his own eyes, and he could not keep quiet about it.
During the many journeys he undertook, the map of misery had become branded on his soul, and he cried out loud that Christ is still being crucified to this day, that Golgotha is not a thing of the past.
And for Fr Werenfried the human suffering always had a face and a name; it was never distant or abstract, never a mere statistical entry.
One term this Dutch Norbertine priest always used to describe ACN was as a “school of love”.
But Fr Werenfried was not simply a collector of donations.
Above all he was an eyewitness, filled with sympathy and respect.
For him it was a matter of honour to preserve the memory of those who were being persecuted for their faith and to give them a voice.
He had a profound faith in the workings of God’s power in weak men.
He had experienced this in his own person, for despite his imposing physical stature, he had always had poor health.
In his youth he was deemed too weak even for the work of a normal parish priest.
But the name “Werenfried”, which he took at his religious profession, means “fighter for peace”, and was in fact to become a lifetime’s program for him in the decades that followed.
At the peak of his energies he was preaching an average of about 70 sermons or appeals a month.
Fr Werenfried was also a prophet, who could read the signs of the times.
At the end of the Second World War he realised that another catastrophe could befall Europe if we failed to overcome the hatred in human hearts.
Hence his initiative, collecting food and clothing and other aid in Holland and Belgium for the suffering German people, was by no means a merely humanitarian action but a crucial contribution to the cause of reconciliation and understanding between nations.
In 2002 Romano Prodi, the then president of the European Commission, paid tribute to him as an “angel of peace” for Europe.
From this early initiative of practical charity towards the “enemies of yesterday” there developed an international charity that within a few years was to be active all over the world.
Fr Werenfried was often well ahead of his time in this.
For example, already in the 1960s he prophesied the fall of communism in Europe, saying, “The giant portraits of the modern Goliaths that stare down so imperiously on the masses from the walls of all the Kremlins will one day lie in shreds and their bones be turned to dust.
“Their portraits will give way to icons, and for all eternity the truth will stand which the Church at Easter places on the lips of Christ and on our lips: ‘I am risen and am with you still, alleluia. You have placed your hands on me, alleluia. Your wisdom is wonderful, alleluia, alleluia.'”
History proved him right, and on October 13, 1992, he was able to pray the Rosary publicly on Moscow’s Red Square in front of Lenin’s mausoleum.
He saw it as his “last and greatest joy”, after the collapse of communism and at the request of Pope John Paul II, to extend a helping hand to our Orthodox sister Church in Russia, in order to “restore love”.
Here, too, he was a pioneer – and at the same time a tireless prophet, warning against the collapse of faith and morals in modern times.
With his clear and outspoken stance he did not make only friends.
Throughout his life he felt obliged to tell the truth and refused to accept false compromises.
In everything he did he saw himself first and foremost as a priest, whose responsibility was to Christ alone and to the souls entrusted to him.
He was prepared to speak the uncomfortable truth, even at the risk of losing benefactors, rather than to hush up the truth.
Even today, 10 years after his death, the message of this “giant of charity” whose 100th birthday we celebrated on January 17, is more relevant than ever.
His powerful example has been mirrored in millions of hearts in a response of love.
