St. Mary’s Offers Help for Peru Earthquake Victims

St. Mary’s took up a special collection totalling some $1,136.00 to assist earthquake victims in Picso, Peru. Fr. Kane has been in contact with Joan Mahon who is coordinating relief efforts with a Vincentian volunteer group in Lima. For more information on the earthquake and relief effort, check the FAMVIN website: Information on Peru
and first reports on the situation.

Continue to read the letter:

Greetings to All,

Our dilemma this week was whether to continue sending updates but, as emails and photos arrived, it only seemed fair to share some of the touching words and images directly from Pisco and Lima’s protagonists. I write not to ask for more financial help, but for you to feel the personal satisfaction of knowing your contributions have reached Pisco as intended.

On Monday, Fr. Alfonso emailed from Chincha, where “there now is water and working sewers, although streets are still full of rubble. In Pisco there is still no electricity or water in the few homes left standing, and no phones. But streets are being cleaned. The panorama is desolate in that city. It looks like a cemetery. I still don’t know what the future will be like. I have 54 families whose homes are totally destroyed but we are awaiting government instructions as to what they intend to do. Today I opened a cooking area (’olla comun’) next to the tent of the ‘new cathedral’ in Pisco. A group of women has accepted my invitation to prepare meals for the poorest, mostly those who don’t dare go to the large government dining areas. It’s all working very well and I think tomorrow we will have twice as many being fed.”

The next day, Volunteer Santi Navarro and young Fr. Paquito took more than four tons of food, blankets, warm clothing, water and other necessities. These were delivered late at night to Marillac School for distribution by the nuns the next morning. “My heart filled with pain when I realized Pisco was a phantom town; only army soldiers were on the street…” Some of the aid would be brought to a very poor village on the outskirts, called Bernales. As Santi was about to leave for Lima on a public bus, another tremor shook the ground; but she was safely in Lima by 3 a. m.

On Thursday, Pilar Barboza wrote about her second long trip: “I was happy to see women cooking at the doorway of the Church, tending to the needs of registered families with children and elderly members, and mothers of the very young; they’d cooked beans and rice. This time I did see Civil Defense people registering victims. In Pisco many have left and are living elsewhere in tents. One can see trucks with water coming in, and areas where public cooking pots are going. But the city is still there, in ruins. Just dirt.”

Pictures attached add another dimension—one of hope–to these words. The Marillac School will be razed—but its grounds will continue as the distribution point for material aid. And San Clemente Church will be operating from a tent, but as Fr. Alfonso wrote, < strong>” Dear friends, the walls of our temple have fallen, but our Church, which is Us, is alive.”

Together we’ve been able to raise almost $13,000 for Pisco’s victims, and the local Hispanic community has added another $4,000. Our family ties and friendships, and your generosity, have surpassed whatever we could have hoped to send to Peru. There is, no doubt, a long, arduous road ahead to rebuild towns, villages, and many thousand lives. But for your generous help at this moment of crisis, we all thank you once again.

With a hug to each,

Mike and Joan Mahon