Auteur/autrice : Mathilde Daniel

« I am close to you, and I pray for you, » Pope Francis told the Turkish people reeling from earthquakes that killed nearly 42,000 people in Turkey and neighboring Syria, according to figures updated Feb. 16.

During a meeting with Ufuk Ulutas, Turkey’s new ambassador to the Holy See, the pope wrote a message to the « noble Turkish people » and said his thoughts and prayers are with them « in this moment of so much pain. »

Two 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes struck southern Turkey Feb. 6. Ten days after the quakes, at least 36,000 people were reported dead in Turkey and another 5,800 in Syria.

Via the papal almoner, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, Francis sent 10,000 thermal shirts to earthquake victims in southern Turkey Feb. 15. Over 6.3 million people in the region are believed to be sleeping in temporary lodging such as tents and shipping containers in below-freezing temperatures.

Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches, was scheduled to travel to Turkey and Syria Feb. 17-21 to express the pope’s closeness to those affected by the earthquake, the Vatican said Feb. 16.

The archbishop was scheduled to meet with Catholic relief organizations and religious congregations working on the ground as well as the leaders of Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim communities in the region. In Damascus, Syria, the archbishop planned to visit a mosque hosting people left homeless after the earthquake.

The dicastery said in a statement that Gugerotti’s trip aims « to encourage all those working to confront the emergency, » and to express « the need to establish better coordination » among relief efforts that will be needed in the coming months.

Pope Francis sent 10,000 thermal shirts to earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria, where millions are sleeping outdoors in below-freezing temperatures.

Two 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes devastated the region Feb. 6, killing more than 40,000, according to figures released Feb. 15.

According to the Vatican, the winter clothing was personally transported to the port of Naples, some 115 miles south of Rome, by Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, Feb. 14.

The shirts were scheduled to arrive in Turkey Feb. 17 and be delivered to the Kilis refugee camp in southern Turkey, which has hosted refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria since 2012 and currently holds some 60,000 people.

The Vatican said Francis also sent an undisclosed amount of financial aid to the apostolic nunciature in Syria to support the Syrian people « already exhausted by so many years of war and now by the devastating earthquake. »

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said that over 1 million people in Turkey are living in temporary housing facilities, such as tents and shipping containers, as of Feb. 11. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimated that as many as 5.3 million people could be left homeless in Syria as a result of the earthquakes. In February, nighttime temperatures in the region consistently fall below 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Turkish government received criticism for its response to the disaster after backups on roads and airports made it difficult for international aid to reach its destinations. In Syria, the ongoing civil war blocked aid from reaching opposition-held territories immediately following the earthquakes.

The distribution of the thermal shirts will be organized by the Rava Foundation, a charity that supports vulnerable children worldwide.

In December, the Dicastery for the Service of Charity organized a drive to collect thermal shirts for people in Ukraine without electricity during the Christmas season. The Vatican said Krajewski brought the shirts, along with 40 generators, to Ukraine in the days leading up to Christmas.

Two Catholic priests imprisoned in Nicaragua since August arrived in Charlotte late Feb. 12 to hugs and tears from family and friends, after their release and deportation to the United States Feb. 9.

Frs. Ramiro Tijerino and Óscar Danilo Benavidez, both of Nicaragua, were among 222 political prisoners exiled from the country by President Daniel Ortega. Their release came after what the U.S. government said were concerted diplomatic efforts.

Mayra Tijerino, a parishioner at St. Matthew in Charlotte, flew to Washington to bring her brother and his fellow priest to her home in the Charlotte area.

The parish, which has been praying for him and his fellow political prisoners since their imprisonment last August, shared the good news of the priests’ return at Sunday Masses, and two dozen well-wishers turned out to greet them at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport.

« I am thankful to God, » Tijerino’s mother, near tears as she and her husband positioned themselves at the bottom of an escalator that would soon deliver their son.

« He’s coming! » a boy cried, spotting Tijerino, his uncle, descending toward him.

Well-wishers unfurled blue-and-white Nicaraguan flags as they greeted the priests, who appeared generally fit — and all smiles.

« There were some hard months but thanks to God and the prayers of this parish, we were given the strength to endure, » Tijerino said, working his way through a receiving line in baggage claim.

Benavidez was embraced as if he were family, too. « God bless the parish, » he said. « I am grateful to this diocese, and to the parish, and to the faithful whose prayers sustained us. »

Both priests said they were not physically mistreated in prison but noted emotional and psychological stress caused by such tactics as leaving the lights on for two straight months, then off for a month.

« They gave us food, » Tijerino said, « and the medical care wasn’t the best, but it was there. »

Fr. John Allen, parochial administrator of St. Matthew Parish, hugged his fellow priests and pledged to help with anything they needed. He has arranged for a physician to see both priests during the coming week and is planning a Mass of Thanksgiving at an appropriate time.

« Today is a joyous day for their family and friends, and we look forward to celebrating with them at St. Matthew, » Allen said. « As witness to the power of prayer, we will continue to pray for Bishop Álvarez who remains imprisoned and in danger. »

Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa — a vocal critic of the Nicaraguan government who was forcefully put under house arrest in August — refused to board the Feb. 9 flight carrying the group of political prisoners to the United States, according to Ortega, who says the prelate wanted to meet first with his fellow bishops. The bishop was subsequently moved from house arrest, where he had languished incommunicado for five months, to a prison notorious for deplorable conditions.

On Feb. 10, Álvarez was convicted and sentenced by a Nicaraguan court to 26 years in prison. The court convicted the bishop on charges of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and spreading false information after a secret trial in which he was denied a lawyer of his choosing. He was also stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship and prohibited from holding elected office or a public position.

Álvarez was not present as Judge Octavio Rothschuh delivered the decision over state-controlled media.

In his Sunday morning message Feb. 12, Pope Francis invited the faithful to pray and expressed sadness over the continued detention of Álvarez. He issued an appeal for Nicaraguan leaders « to open their hearts » in search of peace and to engage in dialogue.

As an independent institution trusted by a large portion of Nicaraguans, the church is a threat to Ortega’s increasingly authoritarian rule. Student protests intensified last spring and numerous Catholic and other religious leaders were among those detained during a crackdown last summer.

« I am grateful to God for bringing me here, and I am happy to see my family, » Tijerino said Feb. 12, kissing his infant nephew Eduardo, whom he was meeting for the first time.

« I knew I would see them again — I just didn’t know when, » he told the Catholic News Herald, Charlotte’s diocesan newspaper. « I want to thank the Catholic community of Charlotte for their prayers of support for me, and I hope we will remember and continue to bring strength to the prisoners who remain in Nicaragua. »

The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego said Feb. 10 it may declare bankruptcy in the coming months as it faces « staggering » legal costs in dealing with some 400 lawsuits alleging priests and others sexually abused children.

In a letter that was expected to be shared with parishioners over the weekend, Cardinal Robert McElroy said the cases were filed after California lifted a statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse claims.

Assembly Bill 218, which was signed into law in 2019, allows alleged victims to sue up until age 40. Also, beginning in 2020, it opened a three-year window for filing lawsuits without age limitations.

Most of the alleged abuse cited in the suits took place 50 to 75 years ago, and the earliest claim dates to 1945, Kevin Eckery, communications director for the diocese, said at a Feb. 10 news conference, KNSD-TV reported.

Eckery predicted that it would cost the diocese $550 million to settle the cases, none of which have gone to trial.

In his letter, the cardinal said none of the suits involve allegations against any currently serving priest.

« This reflects the reality that the Church has taken enormous steps to root out the sexual abuse of minors in its life and to promote the protection of minors, » McElroy wrote.

Even so, the diocese is facing « staggering » legal costs and most of its assets were used to settle previous allegations with a $198 million payout in 2007, McElroy wrote.

« Even with insurance, the diocese will not be able to pay out similar sums now, » the letter said. « This challenge is compounded by the fact that a bill has now been introduced into the Legislature that seeks to eliminate the statute of limitations entirely, leaving the diocese vulnerable to potential lawsuits forever. »

Bankruptcy would « provide a pathway » for the diocese to compensate sexual abuse victims while continuing to run its ministries, the cardinal said.

The diocese has more than 100 active priests and covers San Diego and Imperial counties, an area of more than 8,800 square miles (about 22,800 square kilometers) with a Catholic population of nearly 1.4 million, according to its website.

« It’s up to you. » When you hear that, do you believe it’s true? Advertisers hawk phrases like this to imply that the « right choice » is available for a price you can’t afford to pass up. When my mother would say « It’s up to you, » the consequences for making the wrong choice were predictably unpleasant.

How much freedom do we really have? That’s the question of today’s readings.

Almost 200 years before Christ, Yeshua, the author of Book of Sirach, responded to this question in a collection of the best wisdom and religious advice he could gather. In today’s first reading, Yeshua asserts that human beings are free to choose life or loss. He wanted to liberate people from the idea that their lives were predetermined or controlled by fate.

Belief in fate or freedom generates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unless your name is Sisyphus, most people who feel controlled by the fates will not struggle against them.

Meanwhile, people who believe they have free will usually opt to choose how to deal with all that happens, no matter their degree of control over their circumstances.

While today’s psalm promotes the idea that adherence to God’s law is the way of wisdom, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians offers an interesting twist on this idea. Paul calls the Corinthians’ attention to a different sort of wisdom. According to Paul, mature Christians have learned the mysterious wisdom of the cross: an apparent failure that ushers in blessing beyond measure.

Paul is operating in the paradoxical realm of Gospel living. For him, real wisdom leads people to admit and accept the fact that they understand only the slightest sliver of the truth. In Paul’s way of thinking, the people who are animated by the Spirit are wise enough to trust that neither their eyes nor ears, nor even heart can comprehend what has been begun in them and will be completed by God.

Under Paul’s guidance, we might read today’s Gospel not as a sermon, but as a revelation of Jesus’ own consciousness and wisdom.

The interpretive key to everything Jesus wanted to say is encapsulated in the phrase, « I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill. » Jesus, the prophetic Jewish preacher, understood that his vocation was to demonstrate the deep meaning of everything that had gone before him, particularly of God’s loving interaction with humanity.

In an oppressed society hoping for military victories, Jesus preached radical nonviolence.

In a religious tradition that cherished sacrifice as humans’ best offering to God, Jesus taught that interpersonal reconciliation was worth more than any material offering.

In a patriarchal and slave-holding society, Jesus preached that looking on another as an object for self-gratification rather than as an equal subject before God was tantamount to adultery. (Remember, adultery was the most common description of Israel’s religious unfaithfulness and it was more a question of the unfaithfulness of idolatry than anything sexual.)

In a society that valued physical integrity and saw disability as a sign of God’s disfavor, Jesus claimed that being maimed or blind was preferable to denigrating another in thought or action. (Some early Christian fundamentalists took his hyperbole to heart and maimed themselves — completely missing Jesus’ sense of humor and hyperbole.)

Any one of Jesus’ phrases summarizes his whole teaching, yet the simplest and clearest is « Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’  » Who could ask for a more straightforward call to the never-ending task of living with integrity? When we describe Jesus with words like holy, wondrous, loving and faithful, each of those describes a dimension of his integrity as son of God and son of man, as the person who fulfilled the human vocation to be an image of God.

As he preached the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus revealed his own discernment about the purpose of life and the place of law. Jesus had realized that anger, resentment, the use of others for personal pleasure or gain, and the easy severing of relationships were nothing more than diverse expressions of profound disrespect for the other.

Jesus preached, not to burden others, but to invite them into profound freedom. Today, he would surely remind us that relishing anger or grudges — even at injustice — confines us in self-made mental/emotional prisons and implicitly reveals that we consider our opinion of others as infallible. Jesus’ warning against lust applies also to racism, sexism, and all the bigotries that assume that our way is the norm while others are deviants.

Today’s Scriptures invite us to lay claim to the freedom to live in love. We cannot control others, but we can choose how to respond to them. In baptism and every celebration of the Eucharist we say yes to Christ’s way. Let our yes be yes!

In the contemporary world, religious poetry is often dismissed as didactic or pietistic. But religious poetry in its themes and art is deeply allied to spirituality: Poetry’s focus on meaning, suffering, life, death, love and nature allies it with the themes of religion. Poetry requires one to slow down, pay attention, encounter the real meaning of things; in that sense it is like religious ritual. A universal and the purview of ancient priests, poetry, like song, evokes emotion. It is a form of enchantment that can transform. Poetry does not provide answers, but it stimulates questions that awaken. Poetry may be the contemporary remedy for what ails us.

There are few contemporary poets who can effectively do for us what religion does — that is, bring solace, give courage, connect us to all that is, overcome loneliness and a sense of meaninglessness. Poetry evokes a stage prior to religion. As Anglican writer Evelyn Underhill said: Poetry is the royal banner that goes before prayer. 

One little-known poet had this gift. Possessing an incarnational imagination, she knew both suffering and love, the two wellsprings that bring one to awe and mystery, and prompt reaching out in compassion.  

Anne Channing Porter was born in 1911 to a non-Christian family of means and reputation. Her two loves were poetry and nature. She dropped out of college and considered herself a misfit; when she married painter Fairfield Porter, they were connected to the bohemian world of the New York poets and painters in the 1950s and 1960s. Although she wrote poetry her whole life, she published only a few poems. She was a mother of five, including a son with a disability. She was hostess to the many who visited and ate at their table. Guests of the Porters might stay for weeks, but sometimes years.

The Porters’ marriage was a stormy one; through it all, Anne wrote poetry in private, never seeking publication. In 1954, at age 43, Anne converted to Catholicism, influenced by the likes of Franciscan priests, Dorothy Day, Julian of Norwich, Francis of Assisi, Abbe Huvelin and later Teilhard de Chardin. The Porters’ friends were atheists, Marxists and Freudians who could not understand her conversion. They must have only grown more perplexed when, a few years later, she became a Third Order Franciscan.

When Fairfield unexpectedly died in 1975, Anne Porter was 65, and only after that did she begin to publish her poems. She continued to do so until her death in 2011 at almost 100 years old.

Porter was a late-blooming poet. At age 83 she published An Altogether Different Language, a 1994 National Book Award finalist, and in 2006 her poems were published in In Another Word. Living Things: Collected Poems of Anne Porter was published in 2006.

The starting point to Porter’s writing was her belief that the kingdom of God is within and without, in every person and in all creation. She wrote of the personal and global suffering of the innocents and the elderly. She pled to Mary, the « flowering  / of our human beauty, » for in her heart « the lost / Rejected and abandoned ones / Are held in honor. » One of her most powerful poems, « A Song of Fear and Fire, » is about the afterlife, when she would become a « tiny flake of ash » and will be « tossed / Into a fearful nothingness s/ Beyond the stars / whirling / Until my fire goes out / … I still will praise you. »

One of Porter’s most luminous poems is « Music, » in which she recalls weeping as a child while her mother played the piano. Music at its most beautiful opens a wound in us, an ache of desolation, of homesickness, she wrote, « But we were made for Paradise »:

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
We half remember
That lost native country …
 

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

If she knew the beauty of music and nature, she also knew suffering. Her son, Johnny, had an undiagnosed disease and died young. He was a punster, a misfit, who whooped and growled with wild ecstatic joy. He was not afraid of dying, just of getting hurt: « So Johnny, now you’re one of the greatest, / Because here on earth you were certainly one of the least. » 

Porter was attuned to suffering in her own family and globally as well. She was alive to her sins of commission and omission. In « A Short Testament » she writes:

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it …

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them.        

Anne Porter’s poetry is testimony to her rich interior life. She learned from nature to pay attention and to be receptive. In nature she heard the « altogether different language » of praise.  Her humility and suffering were the source of her compassion; this luminous poetry was what poured out.

Indigenous people have a « fundamental role » in protecting the planet from « unprecedented » social and environmental threats, Pope Francis said.  

Meeting with participants from the Forum of Indigenous Peoples, organized by the International Fund for Agricultural Development — a U.N. agency based in Rome — the pope praised the theme of this year’s forum, « Leadership of Indigenous peoples on climate issues: Community-based solutions for improving resistance and biodiversity. »

All people should listen to the wisdom of Indigenous people to understand the human roots of the environmental crisis and take steps toward developing sustainable practices, the pope said. « If we really want to care for our common home and better the planet we live in, profound changes in lifestyle, production and consumption are essential. »

« Aboriginal cultures are not to be converted to a modern culture, » he said. « They are to be respected. »

Francis also called on governments to recognize Indigenous people’s rights, as well as their « cultures, languages, traditions and spiritualities. »

Ignoring Indigenous communities, the pope said, « is a grave error, not to say a great injustice. »

A lack of recognition for Indigenous territorial rights has led to the targeting of Indigenous populations, particularly those who live on lands where there are fossil fuel and mineral reserves. Global Witness, a nongovernmental organization, reported that 1,733 land and environmental defenders, many of them Indigenous persons, have been killed since 2012, primarily in Latin America.

Francis specifically noted the mining practices in the Amazon region and deforestation in other places that « destroy peoples. »

The pope told the participants that now, more than ever, many people are calling for changes to the power structures that govern Western society and are seeking to transform the historic relationship of exclusion and discrimination toward Indigenous people « marked by colonialism. » 

Action against climate change, he said, must be taken in « constant collaboration » with Indigenous peoples, « because the environmental challenge we are facing, and its human roots have an impact on each one of us. »

According to the International Labor Organization, Indigenous people represent approximately 6.2% of the world’s population.

In response to the devastating earthquake that struck northern Syria Feb. 6, the patriarchs and heads of churches in the country demanded the lifting of « unjust sanctions » on the Syrian people, calling for « exceptional measures » to secure delivery of humanitarian aid.

« We, the three patriarchs with the heads of churches in Syria, demand from the United Nations and the countries imposing sanctions on Syria to lift the embargo and the unjust sanctions imposed on the Syrian people, and to take exceptional measures and immediate initiatives to secure the delivery of the much-needed relief and humanitarian aid, » the church leaders said in a statement.

« We appeal to governments, international organizations, NGOs, charities, and peace advocates everywhere to expedite the support of relief and rescue efforts, irrespective of any political consideration, » the prelates said.

The three patriarchs based in Syria are Melkite Catholic Patriarch Joseph Absi; Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II and Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X.

« We also appeal to the conscience of all the people of goodwill to advocate on behalf of the Syrians in order to put an end to their misery and enable them to live in dignity as envisioned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, » the prelates said.

« This natural disaster adds to the ordeal of the Syrian people, » the Syrian church leaders stressed, adding that the people continue to suffer « from the tragedies of war, crises, disasters, epidemics, and the harsh economic hardships. »

« We pray for the victims and their families, asking the Lord to grant rest to the souls of the departed and recovery to the wounded. We, likewise, pray for all those working in the fields of relief, rescue, and hospitalization, » the prelates said.

The earthquake that hit northwestern Syria and south Turkey in the early morning hours of Feb. 6 left at least 11,000 people dead and thousands more trapped under the rubble.

According to the expert quoted by the Associated Press, hope is fading with every hour of search.

« The first 72 hours are considered to be critical, » Steven Godby, a natural hazards expert at Nottingham Trent University in England, told the AP.

« The survival ratio on average within 24 hours is 74%, after 72 hours it is 22% and by the fifth day it is 6%. »

At the same time, he said it was too soon to abandon hope.

Sako Khaloyian recalled the terror of the night of the earthquake. « We were so frightened, » he told OSV News.

The 35-year-old Armenian Catholic was most worried about his wife, who is 36 weeks pregnant.

« I was very concerned about her. I was trying to protect her with my body.

When the huge tremor stopped, broken glass was everywhere in their apartment.

First, they went to a relative’s home nearby, but still fearing the aftermath of tremors, they took their car and went to a nearby schoolyard, filled with cars of other residents seeking safety.

« It’s an open space, not close to buildings or trees, anything that might fall, » he said. Aftershocks were continuing, however.

« Whenever the aftershocks are occurring, we fear it might be a big one, » he said. « For now, it is decreasing. Hopefully, it will stop. »

« All the churches have opened their halls and are providing shelter, » Khaloyian said, but for himself and his wife, the schoolyard was the nearest possible option.

Despite the fear of aftershocks, the couple returned briefly to their apartment. « My wife started to feel tired after sitting so long and had to lay down. We are on the second floor, so we can escape fast. »

« The worst fear is not knowing what to expect, » Khaloyian said. « After 12 years of war, a terrible economic situation, and now this earthquake, we’ve been going through a lot of hard times. »

« Faith is the only thing that is holding us together. We are praying and believing that God will protect us during these hard times, as he always did, » Khalorian said.

Syria has been devastated, even before the earthquake, by more than a decade of conflict and a dire economic situation. Now, to make things worse, international economic sanctions placed on a regime in power are stopping aid.

« The situation is awful, » Riad Sarji, executive director of Caritas Syria, told OSV News.

While churches, convents and mosques are hosting people, there are still thousands who are in the open air or staying in their cars, fearful of returning to their apartments, he said.

More than 120 buildings in Aleppo are completely destroyed and more than a thousand buildings have cracks.

« People are afraid to go back to their homes. They are afraid of aftershocks and the danger that their building will collapse, » Sarji said.

« The demand is really huge. Some areas don’t have water to drink and they need food, » he said, adding that the sanctions « have badly affected the disaster. »

« Imagine, no electricity, no fuel, nothing, in a very cold area, » he said. « This is a critical time to inform the Western countries to remove the sanctions on Syria. It’s enough. It’s enough. »

It seemed that 12 years of a bloody war should have been enough tragedy for the people of Aleppo and other Syrian cities. But in the early hours of Feb. 6, a devastating earthquake struck northwestern Syria, killing 1,500 as of 5 a.m. Eastern on Feb. 7.

In southern Turkey and Syria combined, the death toll reached more than 5,000 as of early morning hours on Feb. 7 and is expected to rise as people are still trapped under the rubble.

In Aleppo, people are trying to pick up the pieces after the shock of the catastrophe.

« It’s a desperate humanitarian situation, » Chaldean Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo, and former president of Caritas Syria, told OSV News.

Even before the catastrophe, there were electricity and fuel shortages in Syria’s second-largest city of more than 2 million people.

« There is no electricity, there is no fuel, the winter is very harsh, and it is cold inside and outside. There is so much poverty, » Audo said, underlining that « on top of all that, we have to face this earthquake. It’s not easy. The situation is really terrible. »

By early morning on Feb. 6, following the earthquake, the bishopry (bishop’s residence where offices are often located) was hosting about 50 people, including children: « We prayed together, and we had some tea. »

Audo explained that people who live on the above-ground floors in apartment buildings do not feel safe. « It is dangerous, especially if there is another earthquake or aftershocks. » In fact, a second earthquake struck early afternoon on Feb. 6.

The Chaldean Catholic bishop said the churches of different rites are organizing centers to provide food and water. « This is the first step of help in this tragedy, » he said.

After almost 12 years of a deadly war in Syria, the earthquake came on top of the suffering its people had already experienced.

« I am from Aleppo, and it’s the first time I experienced a dangerous tragedy of an earthquake, » said the 77-year-old bishop. « I thought it was the end for me. »

Maronite Bishop Joseph Tobji of Aleppo referred to the earthquake as « the biggest terror. »

« I didn’t experience anything like this in all the years of war, » Tobji told OSV News. « People are shocked and crying, » he said.

« We are welcoming people in the bishopry, in the cathedral and in the parishes, » he said, adding that they are « buying food to help the people. » By the afternoon of Feb. 6, the Maronite Cathedral of Saint Elijah in Aleppo was hosting around 150 people.

« Our people have suffered for 12 years now because of the war, because of the sanctions. I have always pleaded to the world to have mercy on our people. »

Sandy Agob, a 29-year-old Maronite Catholic from Aleppo, told OSV News that since 4 a.m., when the earthquake struck, they were « living in horror. »

« I’m so scared, but thank God we are okay, » said Agob, who lives with her parents in a ground-floor apartment. « Today was the worst day ever. Worse even than the war. You realize that in a single moment, there’s just a thread between your life and death, » she added.

Shaken by the earthquake, Agob shared what she told her parents immediately after the tragic shock: « Why do people (in the world) have problems with each other, while life is so fragile that it can be just taken away in seconds? »

Sleeping at the time of the earthquake, Agob said she heard her parents shouting to come to them and that in their apartment, « everything was moving and broken. »

The first quake, which she said lasted four minutes, « was so long. » They « couldn’t stand up, so we sat on the floor » in the entryway to the bathroom, trying to keep safe, Agob said.

« I kept praying, praying, praying, holding a picture of Jesus and Mary. Thank God, He protected us, » she said. Hearing the crashing sounds of stones falling outside, Agob recounted that she thought: « We are going to be killed. »

« But God saved us, » she said.

After five minutes, they felt another quake, not as strong, lasting about 30 seconds.

She and her mother dressed quickly, her father still in his pajamas. « I thought we might never come back to our home » if it got destroyed. Grabbing their important documents, they rushed to their car and drove to an area not surrounded by buildings, staying there until 7 a.m., then returning home.

She noted that her friend, who lives on the sixth floor of a building, in which the earthquake was felt even stronger, ran outside in the rain without any shoes.

By 8 a.m., Agob arrived at the bank where she works. « I thought, ‘let’s go to work, maybe it’s a safer place,’ but it was not » — and by 1:30 p.m., she was back home.

On her way to the bank, Agob saw demolished buildings, fallen balconies and the collapsed minaret of a mosque. « I saw people running, on foot, and driving in their cars, » she said, recounting the frantic reaction all around her.

What makes people even more fearful, she said, is the fragility of Aleppo’s buildings after enduring years of shelling and bombing. « We’re afraid that our buildings can’t support anymore from this earthquake. »

While the power in Aleppo typically comes on for two hours a day, Agob’s family has had no electricity in the last three days. Typically households use kerosene heaters in the city but amid the fuel shortage, her parents were rarely able to use their own in the last days to even slightly take the chill out of their home. « We wear many layers of clothes, » she pointed out.

« I really don’t know why God is testing us with this earthquake, because we had enough problems in the war, » Agob said of the catastrophe. « We hope to live peacefully and not to be afraid of losing our life, » she added.

The Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) held an emergency meeting in Beirut on Feb. 6 to discuss the current situation and how to respond to the earthquake’s repercussions.

« We call on the international community and the international ecumenical family to provide urgent emergency aid to the region, in coordination with the Middle East Council of Churches, the Churches and their affiliated institutions, » the MECC said in a statement.

« We urge the immediate lifting of sanctions on Syria and allowing access to all materials, so sanctions may not turn into a crime against humanity, » the MECC implored.

Syria has been under international sanctions since the beginning of the war. Since the uprisings began in March 2011, « the U.S. government has intensely pursued calibrated sanctions to deprive the regime of the resources it needs to continue violence against civilians and to pressure the Syrian regime to allow for a democratic transition as the Syrian people demand, » the U.S. State Department stated on its website.

The Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States has opened the Earthquake Aid for Turkey and Syria Fund « to provide immediate relief to the families that suffered catastrophic loss due to the earthquake that shook Turkey and Syria Monday morning, » the organization said in a statement.

Proceeds from the fund will support missionary priests, religious women and lay missionaries on the ground providing assistance to those impacted by the disaster, defined by Audo as a « tremendous bomb. »

« While it is too early to know the full extent of the devastation wrought by the earthquake, experience tells us that the days ahead will be critical, » Msgr. Kieran Harrington, national director of The Pontifical Mission Societies USA, said in a statement.

« Missionaries are ready to help, and the national director in Turkey is already working with local NGOs to ensure that every dollar sent goes directly to those most impacted by this tragedy, » he added.

The Pontifical Mission Societies USA will distribute grants through Catholic dioceses and trusted partner organizations to ensure that the funds fully benefit the immediate and ongoing needs of communities impacted by the devastating earthquake.