SW News: A month after devastating earthquakes shook southern Turkey and northern Syria killing more than 50,000 people, the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has offered to provide more than $550,000 to help Christians in Syria repair their homes and pay for rent and living expenses.

Xavier Bisits, the head of ACN's Syria project, addressed the necessity of helping Christian families in the post-civil war Middle Eastern nation where 90 percent of the population lives in poverty. He stressed that Christians who feel abandoned by the United Nations and other international organizations "often have no other option" than to seek help from the Church.

As more people find a safe haven with family or friends or as engineers pronounce their houses usable again, the number of Syrians sleeping in churches and other religious buildings is dropping. The Joint Committee of Christian Churches in Lattakia (Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Presbyterian, and Catholic) will receive $250,000 from ACN in order to repair more than 250 homes destroyed by the natural catastrophe.

Aleppo's churches have opened their doors to those in need, and a team of professionals has been tasked with analyzing the damage to all structures in the city and easing the return of displaced residents. Bisits expressed his satisfaction with the churches' collaborative efforts to wisely manage the donated money.

He highlighted that ACN's sponsorship of dwellings in Syria was unusual but crucial for the local populace. Given the magnitude of the exodus, he remarked that it was necessary to help them during this difficult time and fund pastoral and spiritual activity, as Christianity would perish without them.