The Friars and the Earthquake
- Published in Other news items
Wednesday, August 24, 3:36 a.m.: the earth shook in almost all of central Italy. People awoke, startled out of sleep on this hot summer night, and their eyes opened on a devastating terror, the pain of a very violent earthquake felt in a great many places. As I write these lines the press is giving notice of more than three hundred dead and a still unknown number of injured.
On this past September 6, Br. Martín Torres, Guardian of the General Curia, and Br. Raffaele Della Torre, General Councilor, went up to Amatrice to visit our confreres, who from the first days of the tragedy have been present among the people in the tent camps and in the streets. Some days later on September 10, the General Minister, Br. Mauro Jöhri, Br. Štefan Kožuh, the General Vicar, and Br. Paweł Teperski, Director of the Communications Office of the General Curia, made the same trip.
Leaving Rome, the friars were welcomed in Leonessa, birthplace of St. Joseph, which is about forty kilometers from Amatrice and Accumoli in the province of Rieti, the places struck hardest by the earthquake. Br. Orazio Renzetti, the Guardian and coordinator of our presence, showed us what the friars are doing among those affected.
In the words that follow I avoid any exaggeration which gives offense to people’s pain and I relate only what I have seen and heard. I present a summary of what our brothers have told us, especially during the meeting they had with the General Minister.
Our friars from Leonessa and the post-novices and students from Viterbo made their efforts available to help where there was need. The Bishop of Rieti, whose diocese includes the places that were hit the hardest, had asked the Provincial Minister of Rome, Br. Gianfranco Palmisani, for the presence of the Capuchins.
Our friars made themselves present and listened to the pain, anger, and distress of the people. Some of them were close by the survivors in the agonizing moments of the identification of victims: bodies torn apart and disfigured, sometimes identifiable only by a watch, by the color of their pajamas, or by a toy that a child kept close in the night. They went into the half-destroyed and unstable churches in order to recover the Blessed Sacrament. They responded to the request to organize moments of prayer, above all for the motivation and support of the many volunteers who arrived from every part of Italy. Then there was the simple company given to seniors, the playing with children. I saw our friars standing clear-eyed and with discretion in the midst of the people, with a silence full of respect and welcome. I perceived in them their desire to say that even in the rubble, in this deep pain, in the confusion of someone who has lost everything, God continues to be with us and at the same time He can receive and accompany the suffering and the distress even of those who no longer see Him.
Before going to Amatrice the General Minister met with the Bishop of Rieti, Most Rev. Domenico Pompili, who expressed his gratitude for the work of the friars in the area of the earthquake. May gratitude and prayer sustain the work of our brothers.