Aid to the Church in Need

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is a Pontifical Foundation dependent on the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome in conformity with the provisions of Canon Law. ACN has over 60 years of service to the Church in need. Werenfried van Straaten, the Dutch Norbertine priest whom Pope John Paul II named ‘an outstanding apostle of charity’, founded ACN back in 1947. ACN receives no public or official Church funding, relying solely on the generosity of individual benefactors. ACN has national fundraising offices in 17 different countries and has over 600,000 individual benefactors. Despite the varied names from country to country, it is one organisation with one international head office (ACN-International Head Office). On average, ACN annually supports more than 5,000 projects from over 130 countries. ACN helps the Church so that the Church can help others.