Cabo Delgado, 02 April, 2021 / 2:30 pm (ACI Africa).
A Catholic Pontifical charity is facilitating the training of members of Clergy, Religious men and women, as well as the laity in Counselling Psychology aimed at enabling beneficiaries to offer appropriate assistance to those struggling with traumatic experiences amid Cabo Delgado violence.
The beneficiaries of training under the auspices of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) International “are being introduced, in intensive four-day courses, to the basics of psychological and social counselling, learning how to comfort the traumatized and give new hope to wounded souls,” officials of the Catholic entity say in a their Wednesday, March 31 report obtained by ACI Africa.
“We have promised €18,500 towards the cost of these courses (mostly for travel, board and lodging, teaching and study materials),” the leadership of the entity that supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in need, through information, prayer and action discloses.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the trainees are learning in six small groups of 50 at a time, officials of the pastoral aid organization say, terming the training a “new form of pastoral outreach...designed to guide people back to some kind of everyday normality, thereby overcoming their trauma.”
In the report, ACN’s officials liken the role of the Clergy, women and men Religious and the Laity helping the traumatized in Cabo-Delgado, Pemba Diocese, to St. Joseph who played a “central role in the history of salvation.”