A joyful Christmas in solidarity at the Casa del Niño

ARGENTINA, Gabriela Sarquis •

Since the beginning of Advent, the children at Casa del Niño have been preparing for the great Christmas celebration. —

The older children made the Advent wreath and every week they prayed with everyone and lit a candle. They also had an Advent calendar with little resolutions such as “help mom at home, tidy up, help a friend, don’t argue” and others that they wrote down themselves.

On December 8, they set up the Christmas tree and the manger and waited for the arrival of the baby Jesus.

“With the great scroll of names in their hands”, the Benedictines of Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem made a pilgrimage to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve to place the scroll in the grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem. There are 123,333 names on the scroll. Among them are the names of the three hundred children of the Casa del Niño.

Christmas at the Casa del Niño

Christmas dinner campaign

Our “Christmas dinner” campaign was once again a great success. Thanks to the generosity of the families of the Mekhitarista School, the San Vicente Pallotti Institute – two schools in the Belgrano neighborhood -, the BMC company, the Azul Naranja kindergarten with its director Marta Trinchero, and dozens of private benefactors of the Casa del Niño, many of them from the Schoenstatt Family of Argentina and from the readership of schoenstatt.org, all the families were able to receive a special Christmas dinner. Thanks to so much solidarity, we were able to give boxes of food for the Christmas dinner to all the families of the Casa and even to the volunteers and collaborators.

On Friday, December 22, there was a festive lunch for the children, where Santa Claus was also present, and they were able to take the Christmas boxes home with them.

Christmas at the Casa del Niño – a Christmas box for every family

Christmas party with the doctors from the Hospital Británico

On Thursday, December 21, a group of doctors from the Hospital Británico visited the Casa del Niño for a Christmas party and brought toys and presents for the children. All this is thanks to the hospital’s social responsibility.

We would like to thank the many people who selflessly help so that our children can have a wonderful Christmas.

The Casa del Niño Padre José Kentenich is a day care center for children between the ages of 4 and 13 in the San Nicolás district of Florencio Varela, the poorest neighborhood in the city. In this home, we want the children to grow up in a healthy environment, full of love, trust and, above all, hope. The three hundred children who come to the Casa in the mornings and afternoons receive love and attention and learn values so that they can find their way in life in a healthy way, away from the dangers of the streets.

Christmas at the Casa del Niño

Original: Spanish. Translation: Maria Fischer @schoenstatt.org