Papal nuncio to Venezuela urges ongoing aid for earthquake victims
“Beautiful to see solidarity and charity,” Archbishop Ortega tells ACN in LaGuaira. “But needs will persist.”
Recovery from last month’s twin earthquakes in Venezuela will be a long-term project, said the Vatican’s ambassador to the country.
“It’s terrible to see so many buildings” destroyed “and to know the number of victims, sick people,” Archbishop Alberto Ortega Martín, apostolic nuncio of the Holy See to Venezuela, told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). “But it’s beautiful to see the solidarity, the charity of many people, … people from everywhere helping.”
ACN benefactors have “helped very generously,” he noted, as he toured the Diocese of LaGuaira with its bishop and the Archbishop of Caracas. Accompanying the bishops was Regina Lynch, executive president of ACN, and a small delegation from the foundation’s offices in Germany.
Archbishop Ortega, who served as papal nuncio to Iraq in the time when Christians there were just recovering from an invasion of Islamic jihadists, offered his comments on the situation in Venezuela today and can be heard in the brief video below. LaGuaira suffered the greatest devastation from the back-to-back earthquakes of June 24.
“It’s wonderful to see the whole Church in Venezuela taking care of the sick people, the people who have lost their houses,” the archbishop continued. “But this need is going to be necessary” for quite some time.
ACN issued an initial donation for earthquake recovery efforts of $114,000 soon after the devastating event and said that more aid will be forthcoming.
The ACN delegation to Venezuela this week has been meeting with local priests, bishops and religious; visiting Church facilities that were damaged by the earthquakes; inspecting temporary storerooms where donated goods are sorted and distributed, and attending Masses celebrated in the streets because of concerns that churches are not structurally sound.
And, poignantly, they have been visiting with, in the words of Regina Lynch, “those who have lost their nearest and their dearest.”
Two weeks after the quakes hit, and as more bodies have been pulled from underneath extensive rubble, the death toll has risen to more than 3,800.
“You see the rubble, and you know there are people buried under that,” Lynch said. “You see people living in the tents, and you wonder how long are they going to be staying in those tents. They’ve lost their homes.”
–John Burger
