Werenfried van Straaten, born Philippus Johannes Hendricus van Straaten O. Praem. (17 January 1913 – 31 January 2003), was a Dutch Catholic priest and social activist. He was a Premonstratensian priest expatriate in Germany, who became known for his charitable work across the world. He was the founder of the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. History Born in Mijdrecht, Netherlands, he originally intended to become a teacher and enrolled at the University of Utrecht in 1932 to study Classical Philology. There he was also editor in a student newspaper and co-founder of a political party, which had only a short existence. He decided instead to follow a religious life and in 1934 entered the Premonstratensian Tongerlo Abbey, of the Norbertine Order, in the province of Antwerp, in Belgium, taking the religious name Werenfried, in honour of an early Medieval Germanic saint. He became the abbot's secretary, after a bout of tuberculosis that left him too weak for missionary work. He was ordained a priest on 25 July 1940. Charitable work He first rose to public attention at Christmas, 1947, when he wrote an article entitled "Peace on Earth? No Room at the Inn," in which he appealed to all faithful to help the fourteen million German civilians displaced from the east at the end of World War II, six million of whom were Roman Catholics. These refugees and expellees resided in very primitive camps, mostly former Nazi concentration camps or Allied POW camps located in the western occupation zones of Germany and - for a minority - in the Netherlands and Belgium, and suffered from malnutrition and lack of medical care. The response to the article of Van Straaten was unexpectedly generous, proving charity still existed and hatred was lessening towards the former enemies. He earned his nickname, "Bacon Priest" () due to his appeals to Flemish farmers for contributions of food for the German refugees, appeals which met with considerable amounts of meat being donated. His next concern was the pastoral care of the six million displaced Catholics, some of which were housed in purely Protestant areas, without their own churches and pastors. With the action "A vehicle for God" he converted used buses and trucks into mobile altars. In 1953, van Straaten called the International Building Order into being to motivate students to help refugees and displaced persons build their own homes in Germany. This