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The Church is suffering in Haiti |
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21/01/2010 (2:36)
After the earthquake that shook Haiti, Benedict XVI asked for prayers for the thousands of people wounded, displaced or dead; he furthermore assured that the Church is sending help via Catholic charities.
Specifically, Aid to the Church in Need has set its emergency plan in motion so as to help as many victims as possible. According to Xavier Legorreta, the organization’s project coordinator for Latin America, “the humanitarian aid will come and it is coming. Lives will be saved, the wounded will be treated, the dead will be buried. However, we cannot forget that Haiti is considered to be 99% Catholic. The faithful will need an Archbishop to pastor them, as well as pastors to attend to the needs of the communities. Sadly, there are many priests and religious who have lost their lives; thus the Church must be present in the midst of this catastrophe.”
As he explained in an interview with Spanish magazine Forum Libertas, the Church has suffered tremendous losses, “the Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince has 80 parishes with approximately four churches in each parish. We are talking about 320 churches. If this earthquake has destroyed almost everything, we can presume that the majority of these [churches] have been destroyed as well.”
“Our work,” he said, “must face [the challenge] of helping priests to attend to and console the faithful who have lost family members. They need to carry this [ministry] out in the churches. We are talking about the reconstruction of some 150 places of worship, which requires both the assistance of Aid to the Church in Need’s benefactors and the attention to the needs of hundreds of priests and religious.”
During the earthquake, Soleil Radio and TV -- whose images we are now seeing -- were destroyed. These Catholic stations recently commemorated their 32nd anniversary and were restructured in 2009. All their collaborators have died -- only one person was saved, Joseph Luis Carazas Neyra from Peru, who spent 15 hours buried under the ruins. The Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Serge Miot, is also counted among the dead.
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