Gugerotti visited Syria and Turkey from 17-21 February to express Pope Francis's support for earthquake victims and to coordinate relief efforts.

The archbishop said that the country's infrastructure has been severely weakened by sanctions, making it difficult to transfer funds or obtain visas for aid workers.

The US Treasury Department announced on 10 February that it would exempt relief efforts from its sanctions on Syria for 180 days. However, analysts say the long-term impact of sanctions on the country's infrastructure is the main obstacle to distributing aid.

Gugerotti noted that much of the affected territory is controlled by rebel groups who must allow aid to pass through to reach victims, but some groups block aid entirely.

In such cases, religious communities have intervened to provide aid through "more or less legal" channels. The archbishop cited the work of a Franciscan community in northern Syria that has helped to deliver aid to those in need.

Christians and Muslims united

During his visit, Gugerotti met with Catholic relief organisations, religious congregations and leaders from the region's Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim communities.

In Damascus he also visited a mosque that provided shelter to families left homeless by the earthquakes. Throughout the country, he said, Christians and Muslims are united in their hope for God's help in the face of the ongoing crisis.

Pope Francis has urged the international community to provide urgent aid to those affected by the earthquakes. He has called for an end to the conflict that devastated Syria for over a decade.

Gugerotti called on countries to consider the "concrete good of the people" rather than just their political goals. He said that the alternative to failed political solutions is chaos.

The archbishop also said that some aid is not reaching victims because countries providing aid through rebel groups "don't verify where this money goes and to whom".

Sources

National Catholic Register

CathNews New Zealand

Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, head of the Vatican's Dicastery for Charity, and Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, head of the Vatican's Dicastery for Oriental Churches, have been on the ground for an official visit to meet with locals and convey the Pope's closeness.

Despite miraculous rescues of people being found alive under the rubble throughout the week, the prospect of finding more survivors appears grim as first responders shift from rescue to recovery mode.

The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.8, has left a death toll of at least 45,000, which is still expected to rise. Hundreds of thousands of apartments were destroyed in the disaster.

Strong after shocks followed.

Pope Francis has repeatedly offered words of comfort to the people of Turkey and Syria affected by the earthquake.

In addition to the aid sent this past weekend, the pope sent 10,000 thermal sweaters to victims in the affected area.

Personally delivered by Krajewski, the sweaters were scheduled to arrive on February 17 at the Kilis refugee camp in southern Turkey, which currently is home to around 60,000 people and has hosted refugees fleeing Syria's civil war since 2012.

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.

Pope sends financial aid to Syria

The Pope also sent an undisclosed amount of financial aid to the apostolic nunciature in Syria to support the Syrian people, who according to the Vatican are "already exhausted by so many years of war and now by the devastating earthquake".

In addition to Krajewski, Gugerotti has also been on an official visit to the region to "express the Holy Father's closeness to the populations seriously affected by the recent disastrous earthquake," and to meet with the bishops and charitable organisations providing frontline aid.

Gugerotti travelled to Aleppo, Syria, where he visited both civil and ecclesial organisations assisting earthquake victims, and celebrated Mass with local Catholic and Orthodox bishops, as well as some Muslim leaders in the area.

He then celebrated Mass in the Greek Melkite cathedral and met with members of a local community of the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa, and then left for Damascus.

Gugerotti is scheduled to meet with local patriarchs and Catholic and non-Catholic bishops who reside in the quake-affected areas in Damascus on Monday.

He will then travel to Istanbul, where on Tuesday, he is scheduled to meet with Turkish bishops and the directors of local Caritas offices engaged in relief efforts.

While rescue efforts have already ended in all but two provinces in Turkey, search efforts continue only in the southern areas of Kahramanmaras and Hatay.

With so many people still missing, the aid provided by the Pope and his representatives is essential in the ongoing relief efforts.

Sources

CruxNow

The Catholic Standard

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked both countries last week, toppling buildings and killing tens of thousands.

Hearing the call, the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) will be providing at least NZ$800,000 of immediate aid to Christians in Syria.

After many years of war and the economic collapse of Syria, ACN had projects in place and partners on the ground in cities such as Aleppo and Lattakia. Both cities have considerable Christian communities. Both were badly affected by the quake.

ACN is concentrating its efforts on helping people get back to their homes as quickly as possible.

"It's a desperate humanitarian situation," says Chaldean Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo and former president of Caritas Syria.

Audo says even before the quake, the Aleppo two million people faced electricity and fuel shortages.

"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.

"It's not easy. The situation is really terrible."

Many people say that even compared to the 12 years of war they have just endured, the earthquake was more terrifying.

Caritas Turkey is also working on the ground.

Besides distributing hot meals and clothes, it has opened a listening centre hotline to provide help to victims, in partnership with the local authorities.

Uyghurs also volunteering

A group of Uyghur volunteers in Istanbul were early responders to the unfolding humanitarian crisis. They drove for 24 hours to assist in relief efforts.

One of the 30-member team's key goals was to help Uyghurs living in Turkey affected by the disaster.

Many Uyghurs who have fled China's crackdown on them in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region - which Uyghurs prefer to call East Turkestan - have resettled in Turkey. There, linguistic, cultural and religious similarities make for an easier transition.

The team was sent "to show that the East Turkestan people and Turkish people are together in thick and thin," said Hidayettullah Oghuzhan, chairman of the Union of East Turkestan Organisations in Istanbul.

Counting the numbers in Turkey and Syria

Officials say over 8,000 people had died in Turkey alone; more than 22,000 are injured.

Around 8,000 have been rescued from the collapsed buildings.

A state of emergency has been declared for three months across ten cities.

Nearly 3,000 deaths were reported in both government and rebel-held areas in Syria - but confirming casualties in Syria is difficult.

Source

• Radio Free Asia
• UCA News
• Catholic News Agency

Both countries were struck by two powerful earthquakes on Monday last week.

They need solidarity from all of us - and they are "in part already martyred by a long war", the pope says.

By Sunday 12 February, the death toll was over 33,000 and climbing.

Hundreds of engineers, medical personnel and rescue workers have been sent to the devastated countries to search for people trapped under wreckage and aid the thousands without shelter in freezing winter conditions.

"Let us pray together so that these our brothers and sisters can go forth in the face of this tragedy, and let us ask Our Lady to protect them," Francis said last Wednesday, before praying with thousands of visitors and pilgrims gathered for his general audience.

Numerous Catholic charitable and aid organisations are helping in practical ways.

Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella organisation of national Catholic charities, has launched a fundraising campaign. It is also asking for donations of winter clothing especially for infants and young children. The charity has been active in Turkey since 1991 and in Syria since 2011, primarily providing aid to refugees.

Bishop Paolo Bizzeti, apostolic vicar of Anatolia, said that the earthquakes were "a tragedy within a tragedy," since the region is already "full of refugees from various countries who have fled terrible situations.

"It is difficult to receive the aid necessary given the state of the roads" he noted.

In Syria, Aid to the Church in Need, a pontifical foundation that provides aid to Catholic communities worldwide, is already supporting reparation projects in Aleppo so people can return home.

The charity said an estimated 7,500 people slept in Aleppo's churches, convents and other locations the night after the earthquakes.

Initially, help for Syria was blocked, because of international sanctions against the country.

Syrian patriarchs and heads of churches demanded the lifting of "unjust sanctions", calling for "exceptional measures" to secure delivery of humanitarian aid.

Syria has been under US sanctions since 1979, when Washington designated it a state sponsor of terrorism. The restrictions were tightened amid the Iraq war in 2004 and repeatedly once civil war broke out in 2011, which led to a collapse in relations between Syria's government and the West.

"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 last Thursday.

"We appeal to governments, international organisations, NGOs, charities and peace advocates everywhere to expedite the support of relief and rescue efforts, irrespective of any political consideration."

Their call has been heeded.

On Friday, the US announced it has temporarily eased its sanctions on Syria. It aims to speed up aid deliveries to the country's north-west, where almost no humanitarian assistance has arrived.

Source

• OSV News
• UCA News
• The Guardian
• CNN

"Our hearts break at the death and destruction we are seeing on our television screens and in our newspapers," they wrote last week during the assembly of the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania in Fiji.

"We know that God is close to those that suffer. We pray that your people sense the love and care of their brothers and sisters around the world, including from Oceania.

"One of the key themes of our Federation ... is the connectedness of human suffering and the suffering of our world. We have seen in your countries how natural disasters can wreak such pain and anguish, with thousands of lives lost.

"The Catholic Church has established appeals to raise funds to support the ongoing efforts for rescue and recovery, and we will encourage the faithful in our region to respond generously.

"The Church is also providing human resources on the ground to respond to immediate needs through our aid agencies.

"Be assured of our ongoing prayers and our attention as your people recover from this tragedy."

The huge earthquakes have killed tens of thousands, and destroyed homes, businesses and infrastructure throughout Turkey and Syria. Urgent and ongoing humanitarian aid is needed.

One minute worse than 12 years of war

"Less than one minute was worse than 12 years of war," says a survivor from Syria.

Even though Syria has been at war for almost 12 years, for many people in Aleppo and in other cities that were affected, the devastating earthquake of 6 February was more traumatic.

"If you ask the people of Aleppo about the war they lived through, they express their feelings of pain, fear, despair about the future, loss of safety, etc. They use many different expressions to express the 12-year war.

"But if you ask them about the earthquake that they were exposed to, the answer is just one word: horror", says a Catholic religious sister who lives and works in Aleppo.

Catholic aid

• The main Catholic hospital of St Louis in Aleppo withstood the quakes and has been helping survivors.
• Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) says it will be providing at least half a million Euros of immediate aid to Christians in Syria.
• Among the Catholic organisations working on the ground in Syria providing relief are Franciscans in Lattakia, the Armenian Orthodox in Aleppo, the Institute of the Incarnate Word and the St Vincent de Paul Society.
• Many Catholic churches are providing shelter for the homeless.
• The Syrian Synod of Catholic bishops has assembled a team of engineers to assess and price the damage to Christian families' houses. ACN says it hopes to be able to help with this.

Source

• Catholic Weekly
• ACN International
• ACN International