Werenfried van Straaten

Father Werenfried van Straaten (January 13 1913 – January 31 2003) who came to be known as the "Bacon Priest", was a Catholic priest known for his humanitarian work, particularly as founder of the international Catholic association Aid to the Church in Need. Born in Mijdrecht (The Netherlands) in 1913, he originally intended to become a teacher and enrolled at the University of Utrecht in 1932. By 1934, he had entered an abbey of the Norbertine order, where he became the abbot's secretary, after a bout of tuberculosis that left him too weak for missionary work.

He first rose to public attention at Christmas, 1947, when he wrote an article entitled "Peace on Earth? No Room at the Inn," in which he appealed for aid for the fourteen million Germans displaced from the East at the end of World War II, six million of whom were Catholic. The response to the article was unexpectedly generous.

He earned his nickname, "Bacon Priest," due to his appeals to Flemish farmers for contributions of food for refugees, appeals which met with considerable amounts of meat being donated.

This initial work led to the formation of Aid to the Church in Need, centered in Königstein, Germany. From 1950, he was active in Catholic relief work worldwide, through church appeals, public speaking, and his newsletter, The Mirror, which he began publishing in 1953. He also wrote a number of books ("They Call Me The Bacon Priest, 1960).

He died on January 31, 2003 at Bad Soden in Germany at the age of 90.

External links

• http://www.kirche-in-not.org/e_pw.htm

Further reading

• "Obituary of Father Werenfried van Straaten", The Daily Telegraph (London, England), 2/1/2003.
• van Straaten, Werenfried. They Call Me The Bacon Priest, New City Press, Belgium, 1965.
• van Straaten, Werenfried. Where God Weeps, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1989.