Supreme Knight Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus discusses the group’s mission with Father Dave at the 136th Annual Supreme Convention of the Knights of Columbus.
Father Dave asks Anderson to talk about the work that the Knights do with persecuted Christians. “We are now trying to get financial assistance in to rebuild communities so that they are sustainable,” Anderson says. “The first effort was, ‘Stop killing the Christians. Stop the genocide.’ We don’t want genocide by attrition. We need to go back and say to these communities that we will put in a sustainable infrastructure and strategy so that you can survive.”
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Anderson also explains how the Knights of Columbus are working to spread awareness of persecuted Christians. “We have a new icon that will go through every diocese in the United States. It’s called Our Lady of Help of Persecuted Christians. You can see Mary with afflicted people under her mantle is a traditional icon, but we have done it with contemporary Christians who are being persecuted. So, we have put the Coptic Christians that were killed, the Missionaries of Charity who were killed in Yemen, the martyrs in Ukraine, India, Korea, and Mexico. They are all represented in this new icon.”
“If we look at the Church in Iraq and Syria, the Christian community in Damascus remembers the community that baptized Saint Paul,” Anderson continues. “So, it’s not as though this is an importation into their culture over the last 200 years. Many of these communities, the Chaldean community in Iraq for example, speaks Aramaic. They speak the language of Jesus, and you’re telling me that a community that’s been there for 2,000 years doesn’t have the right to continue? And that’s the case in many places in the world. I hope we can have a greater realization that nobody has been abandoned by the Lord. So, they should not be abandoned by their fellow Christians. One of the heartbreaking things is talking to people from these regions, and they say, ‘We just think the world has forgotten us.’”
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Father Dave also brings up the ultrasound initiative by the Knights. “We found that more than 90% of mothers who see their baby decide that they are not going to have an abortion,” Anderson says. “And this is even the case when they go into a pregnancy center convinced that they are going to have an abortion. And they go get an ultrasound because a friend or someone told them to, and they go and see the baby and all of a sudden they realize, ‘That’s my baby. That’s mine.’”
“As we were driving into the convention center, we passed a sign that said, ‘If animals could speak, we’d all be vegetarians,’ and I thought to myself, ‘Wow. If unborn children could speak, we’d all be pro-life.’ And the ultrasound project allows us at least to see them if we can’t yet hear them.” (Original Air 8-07-18)
Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus, speaks during a panel discussion at the “Convocation of Catholic Leaders: The Joy of the Gospel in America” (CNS photo/Bob Roller)
