He was a child. Throughout his 90 long years of life he thought, felt, spoke and acted like a child. He was a child of God. He lived in the awareness that his Father would protect him and would "cradle" his concerns in love. This concern was his "work" as he described his life's mission, the pastoral charity "Aid to the Church in Need". Like a child he threw himself with all his heart, all his soul and all his strength into this work. It was his Mandatum Novum in living form. He spared neither himself nor others, and this too was characteristic of his childlike heart. Afterwards, after the battle, when he had got what he wanted, he was sorry and then he asked forgiveness - again just like a child. Forgiveness from God and from men. He lived like a child, he fought like a child, begged, collected, gave everything away again, just like a child. For few others were the words of Christ so true as for him, "let them come to Me, for to such belongs the Kingdom of heaven".

Werenfried came often, in fact always. He lived with God. The Holy Mass, his prayer and his work, his letters, his sermons and appeals, his travels, his encounters with popes, politicians, and bankers - everything he did was done for this one great purpose, to save souls, to lead people to the Father, to extend the Kingdom of love into the remotest corners of the earth. Only in this way can there be peace. Werenfried - a fighter for peace - his name was a programme for life. He fought gladly and always, against opposition, against sickness and weariness, against himself.

Werenfried knew his strengths, and he knew his weaknesses still better. To his benefactors - no one ever heard him speak of donors - he confessed openly, "God has given me a difficult mission, and in doing so He has shut His eyes to my failings and sins. Often He has confronted me with insuperable difficulties and then resolved them Himself. He has placed a boundless trust in my heart and He has never disappointed this trust. He has taken a great deal from me and given me still more, and every time that I was unwise or rebellious, defenceless or powerless, He proved to me that it is He himself who guides our work". That was how he thought, how he loved, how he helped his countless brothers and sisters of the persecuted Church. He found them everywhere, and everywhere he made himself their spokesmen before God. Standing above the favelas of Rio, in front of the huge statue of Christ above the city of the Sugarloaf mountain, he spoke to Him: "Lord Jesus Christ, I have come from afar in order to speak to You on behalf of the poor. On the way I have seen with horror and taken into my heart the needs of the millions. Permit me to say to You that what I have seen on this continent is a scandal... For You too can see the frightful favelas, the slum dwellings of the poor which creep up in every place where the mountainside is not suited to modern architecture. Here the architects of misery have seized their opportunity and taken brutal possession of the slopes. Eight hundred thousand of the poor live here. Pursued by hunger, they have fled from the interior of this nation to the Golden City, but they have ended up in hell."

Werenfried often wrestled with God. Like Jacob in the Old Testament he held fast to the Angel of God. "I will not let you go unless you bless me". Werenfried went even further. He asked the blessing of God not for himself but for the countless poor whom he saw and who turned to him for help, and for the benefactors whom he arrayed around himself like an army in his constant battle to ease the needs of the Church.

An army for the poor. Not infrequently the benefactors themselves were people in need. They were and to this day continue to be inspired by Werenfried's closeness to God. Like the widow in England who wrote to him, "I pray to God that He may bless your wonderful work. Please accept this gift of £15 from a poor widow and pray for me. I had to have my leg amputated - cancer - and I need a great deal of strength for the remainder of my journey." Or like the schoolgirl from California who sent a hundred dollars in small change with the words, "Times are hard nowadays, for myself as for others. My parents think I should be buying my own clothes now. I am sending you the small change I get from my shopping. I am just 14 and I supplement my pocket money with babysitting. Keep up the good work." Or like the young man in Australia who was so touched by Werenfried's letter in the "Mirror" that he joined the ranks of his army with a battle cry of brotherly love which, though altogether personal, surely speaks for many others also, "Recently I have been too preoccupied with myself, with my own financial worries and the affairs of this world. The "Mirror" has opened my eyes to the needs of others. The money I am now sending you I had put by for a new CD player. But I can manage without it, especially when I think of the suffering priests and the young Catholics in Bulgaria who so urgently need a training."

In October 1999, stricken by the effects of a stroke and a heart attack, he turned to this army of God, like a commander going into his last battle, having suffered numerous reverses but still unbowed. They were words that sounded not so much like the orders of the day but rather like a motto for all eternity: "Sixty-three years ago I took the vow of poverty and gave away to the poor the little I possessed. I retained only my voice, which has cried out everywhere for help, and the pen with which I write my begging letters. I laid nothing aside for unforeseen needs. I have no other capital than your good hearts. The hearts of saints and hearts of sinners. For all of us the law of love is what counts. According to this law you may not close your heart against your brothers and sisters in need. Will you once again fill my empty hands and permit me to give away what I have already promised?"

Many of the responses to such appeals in the battlefield of love have been truly heroic. A woman wrote to him from France. "With all my heart I send you my gift. It is not much but it is all I can do for the moment. My daughter has five children and her husband has left her, my son is dependent upon state help, another daughter is handicapped, my second son's wife has been suffering deep depression for months and I myself have been a widow for 36 years. But God has always helped me, and so I want to go on helping, even though it is not much. Please pray for me."

The abandoned, the sick, the suffering, the little and the humble ones - these are the army of Father Werenfried van Straaten. Of course there are others less in need among its ranks. What counts is the response of love, the readiness to help, to fight in these ranks of this virtual army. Werenfried has recruited them all. Their weapons are their love for the poor and their sense of justice - weapons that can never be blunted but which confer more and more strength the more they are used. Werenfried was born with these weapons. The Abbot-general of his Norbertine Order relates an incident that happened when Werenfried was still in his Abbey of Tongerlo, studying theology. The results of one of his intermediate exams were somewhat lacking and the professor gave Werenfried to understand that next time he should obtain considerably higher marks. How many marks, Werenfried asked. "Twenty out of twenty", replied the professor. At the next exam Werenfried obtained 20 marks and had scribbled at the bottom of his paper the sentence: "10 will do, the rest is for the poor".

Now having reached the end of his earthly journey, he has no doubt been sitting another exam. One can imagine this child beggar saying to his Father: "The death is for You, the life is for the poor". And this time again God will not refuse his request. For it was a life lived for love.