By Munir Bayouk/ en.abouna.org

Our Lady of Peace Center is the gift of the Catholic Church to humanity.

The Catholic Church worldwide has all the time been considering all the available measures to spread worldwide peace and ensure human prosperity. Yet, the Catholic Church also strived to help heal human diseases and restore a smile to those who lost hope in life.

Among the major achievements of the Catholic Church, with regards to alleviating the suffering of people, is the launching of Our Lady of Peace Center in Amman.

Since its establishment in 2004, Our Lady of Peace Center, owned by the Latin Vicariate in Amman-Jordan, is an institute that provides free services to people with a variety of disabilities such as intellectual disability, impaired mobility, hearing impairment, bipolar and down syndrome. The center also plays a major role in raising awareness in society in regards to people with disabilities and how to cooperate with them.

OUR LADY OF PEACE CENTER CARES FOR DISPLACED SYRIANS AND IRAQIS

Our Lady of Peace Center has provided Syrians with accommodation. Since the beginning of 2013 over 50 Syrian families have been given shelter for periods of up to 40 days, and most of them have left Jordan for host countries.

To further give a helping hand to the displaced Syrians and Iraqis, the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See in Amman, in cooperation with Caritas Jordan, the social arm of the Catholic Church, and the Latin Vicariate in Amman, launched a new garden offered by His Holiness Pope Francis personally.

The new garden, located at the Our Lady of Peace Center in Amman, named “the Garden of Mercy”, was designed to restore dignity to the forcibly displaced Iraqis who live in Jordan and to provide aid to needy families. It also sought to restore dignity to the forcibly displaced Iraqis by providing them with job opportunities, where aid would be provided to Iraqi refugees living in Jordan from the income generated by the project.

With the help designed to help the poor eke out a living by working at Our Lady of Peace Center to help, a total of 10,000 square meters of arable land and about 600 olive trees were exploited for the production of jam, olive and pickles through a special kitchen assigned to meet this objective.

Based on the fact that Our Lady of Peace Center serves the sick, provides accommodation for the forcibly displaced, and opens job opportunities to the unemployed who lost hope in life, it is time to pay tribute to this Catholic Vicariate-affiliated institute that serves as a panacea to the ills of societies. In this regard, as the center depends greatly on domestic and overseas donations to sustain its work,  it is hoped that such badly needed support would continue at a great pace so that such important and decisive services would continue.

Our Lady of Peace Center is definitely the invaluable gift of the Catholic Church to humanity.