Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - The entire Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples shares the tragedy of this disaster, the pain and suffering of those people and its first action is prayer. Through local churches we are operating to organise concrete relief aid for the people affected. In the meantime news from the area keeps us informed of the terrible situation in those lands and we are all speechless and dismayed at the dimension of the people’s suffering.
One of my collaborators said there were three hundred people at the Sunday Mass in a little church in the diocese of Jaffa in northern Sri Lanka. There were! And not one of them survived the wave which carried death and destruction. It affected areas already poor. It took away all hope. It destroyed the few possessions those people had. As I write this brief message I receive more news of this terrible massacre of innocents. I read with you an urgent message from one of our national directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies, the National Director of India who, like thousands of our missionaries today in that country are working to give an immediate concrete response to this cataclysm.
The message reads: “1000 pilgrims who had come to the Marian Shrine at Vailankanni for Christmas celebrations were drowned in the black ocean wave triggered by the seaquake …they are all dead!”
We are praying for them, praying for those who died bearing witness to their faith, for these thousands of innocent people so suddenly and violently robbed of their life. May the Lord welcome them in his mercy: a tragedy for those beloved people whom I visited only a few weeks ago, a disaster of which the immensity and consequences are still unknown. I see the official numbers of the dead rising by the hour and I think of those vast slums areas where no one knows how many people struggle to survive the dire poverty which they tried to escape …how many of those children, those families will have survived?...non one can tell until the mud has been removed.
The Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples and our personnel all over the affected zone is working to organise assistance and also to assess damages to church centres of assistance many of which are damaged if not destroyed. We are receiving countless messages from missionaries requesting prayers and assistance for people who until yesterday had nothing and today are in danger of losing hope. May our prayers and our aid be their hope.
Card. Crescenzio Sepe.
(Agenzia Fides 28/12/2004)
