For His Friends

I do not have a final total of the generosity of the Catholic people to Haiti from the special week-end collections of the last few week-ends, but I am willing to bet it will be somewhere in the vicinity of one million dollars and rising. Keep your eye here for the latest totals. As you know I asked that all donations be sent to CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES through the diocesan Finance Office but parishes with twinning relationships with parishes in Haiti could and should be guided by the needs of those parishes. In either case, the amounts forwarded would be included in our total diocesan effort. We advanced $250,000 to CRS on the second day to get them started and they set aside an immediate five million for the beginning Haiti effort.

Now to the question raised in the title of this post. The media are infatuated in every disaster with the “big” names among the non-profits who have huge “PR” departments which spring into action with the first news of trouble and make the reporters’ jobs easier by feeding them with stories, pictures, etc. So one will always see the RED CROSS, SAVE THE CHILDREN, WORLD FOOD PROGRAM, SALVATION ARMY and the like saturating the coverage of the relief efforts, especially in their early going. These agencies serve a purpose and do a good job but they often spend a sizable amount of money in fund-raising, public-relations, and they throw a lot of money and material into what appear to the viewer to be the basic necessities. They serve a purpose, but sometimes are among the first to leave when the media moves on to cover something else somewhere else in the world. That was my expedience in Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia after the tsunami and the deaths there.  There and in Haiti, seldom mentioned, but primary and effective care deliverers are organizations such as the US Navy, the Australian Army (in Indonesia) and neighboring nations. They deserve a lot of credit.

But within a week, smaller, very effective aid agencies begin to get their “sea legs” and start making a difference which will last a long time: CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES, MEDICINES SAN FRONTIERES or “Doctors Without Borders” (which is one of my favorites) and CHURCH WORLD SERVICES. Flashy, no. Effective, extremely-choosing geographical areas in which to concentrate they cooperate and do not compete. In Haiti, there is room for everyone and hopefully everyone will stay until the end and the job is completed. So don’t be lulled into thinking that only the big names get things done. Most of the long-term relief and redevelopment efforts will be best accomplished by those who spend the lease to blow their own horns and the most on the suffering.

+RNL

Please excuse my absence from this blog but I am having a challenge focusing my eyes after all the surgeries. This too will pass. What follows is a report to the Board of CRS about our work the last week in Haiti. It is for precisely this that I sought your generous assistance last week and this.

+RNL

NEW DEVELOPMENTS:

On the morning of January 20^th, a 6.1 magnitude aftershock hit off the coast of Haiti, about 6.2 miles deep, about 35 miles west-southwest of the capital of Port-au-Prince (PaP).  The Caritas PaP team reported that it was not strongly felt, though further structural damage is a possibility, and further assessments closer to the epicenter are still needed.

Highlights from Situation Report #8.1

• The Government has devised eight zones for the distribution of humanitarian assistance.  Each zone will receive direct support by a national minister to coordinate the relief effort.
• A UN assessment team reported that Leogane and Gressier are the most severely damaged areas west of Port-au-Prince.  Road access west of PaP is generally good (two lanes paved in most parts).  Power remains off in all areas assessed, although the electricity distribution system appears mostly intact.  Numerous makeshift camps have been established near the main road west from Port-au-Prince.
• A sufficient number of water treatment systems have been reported in metropolitan PaP.  However, the USAID/DART anticipates greater need for water treatment centers outside metropolitan PaP, a prediction that the humanitarian community is working to assess.
• In addition to being the lead agency for the Petonville Club camp (golf course in PaP), CRS has been designated as lead agency for coordinating relief efforts in the town of Legoane, due west of PaP.  CRS will primarily be responsible for basic needs (food, water, non-food items, including nurse/doctor teams as available).
• Staff continues to assess needs and coordinate with Church partners and other agencies to plan larger and more organized food distribution activities.  Yesterday, CRS loaded three 2-ton trucks of food to be distributed by the National Catechists’ Committee in areas of PaP.
• The Haitian Ministry of Health has defined three levels of healthcare:  mobile health centers, fixed health centers (minor health problems) and hospitals with surgical capacities. CRS and the University of Maryland are continuing collaboration to respond to medical needs, prioritizing the mobilization of shock trauma staff.
• CRS continues to work with the USCCB to develop and provide materials for US constituents eager to get involved and staying abreast of advocacy issues such as interest in adoption of Haitian children and temporary protective status for Haitians already in the US.
• The search and rescue team working through the Caritas team recovered two women from the Cathedral.  Sadly, they also found the body of the Vicar General of PaP, Monsignor Charles Benoit.
• The funeral of Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, the Archbishop of PaP, will take place on Saturday, January 23^rd.  Archbishop Dolan, Ken Hackett, Annemarie Reilly and Msgr. David Malloy will join the senior CRS staff in country to attend the funeral and to bring medical supplies.

Yesterday, Wednesday, in a pure act of faith and trust in our generosity as a local Church, I sent $250,000 to Catholic Relief Services as a “quick-start” to their relief efforts. It will provide immediate food, water, medicine and clothes to those who managed to “survive” Tuesday’s 7.0 earthquake. I hope our diocese is ultimately good for 1.5-2 million. We did that well for the far away tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Look at the pictures from from Haiti and tell me they are not crying out for help.

+RNL

Yesterday’s news of a devastating 7.0 earthquake with an epicenter within 15 miles of Port-au-Prince shook these sick bones as much as it must have shaken the survivors in that island nation. The Haitian population–almost all Catholic–by virtue of its enduring poverty (the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere) is so vulnerable to acts of nature which wash away crops, destroy roads and weak infrastructures, slide schools and churches down hillsides. NOW THIS!

I am asking every Catholic in the diocese of St. Petersburg to be as generous as possible even in our own desperate and difficult economic times by responding to special collections to be taken up in all our Churches and institutions this Sunday and next. If you forget this special appeal this weekend, you will have another chance to help. All monies will go immediately to Catholic Relief Services for food, medicine, clothing, housing and humanitarian assistance. The Cathedral in Port-au-Prince has fallen to the ground, taking with it the life of the Archbishop. Buildings will await a later moment – now we need to save lives.

Finally, I ask parishes which twin with Haitian parishes and help them directly kindly to let me know how much assistance has been given, so I can account for that as well.

PLEASE BE GENEROUS. THIS TIME THE TRAGEDY IS LESS THAN 300 MILES FROM OUR DOOR AND THEY ARE CATHOLIC BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

Bishop Robert N. Lynch

After an opening Mass in the hotel, the bishops began their annual Fall plenary assembly by spending the morning in what are called “regional meetings.” Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina are all in “Region XIV” so the bishops of the twelve dioceses of those four states comprise the regional grouping. I know that one of the topics which the bishops were asked to discuss is the number of seminaries spread across the United States at this time. This discussion comes at a moment when it appears that vocations are on the rise and seminary enrollment is increasing. As I mentioned earlier here, St. John Vianney College Seminar opened in September with about 80 seminarians (the highest ever) and St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach opened with about sixty seminarians but a total enrollment of eighty is not more than a year or two away. Seminaries are expensive operations but there are strong regional arguments to be made for them (training future priests for ministry in Spanish to Hispanics, for example.) No one wants to close their seminaries in this country so I wonder tonight what suggestions may have come from the regional meeting discussions this morning.

The Plenary opened with an hour and twenty minutes of formalities including an address by Cardinal Francis George, our President, and the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi. These two talks have always been a part of the opening “ritual” for the meetings. Cardinal George began by speaking about the importance of priests to the ministry of bishops and painted a fine picture of what the Church might be like if there were no priests. He did this largely in the context of this being “the year for priests” as declared by Pope Benedict XVI. It was a fine reflection for we bishops about how important and vital our priests are not just to the Church which is obvious to all of our people, but to our own ministry as bishops.

The Papal Nuncio’s talk spoke about the qualities needed of the bishops in light of love for the Church. He opened with a long quotation from Pope Paul VI prior to his death about the gift of love from Christ to the late Pope in the Church. He then outlined three necessary qualities for bishops: fidelity (allowing here for some application of creativity in addition to preserving the treasury of the faith), prudence, and hope. He paid special tribute to a national meeting of Diocesan Vocation Directors recently held in Newark, finding the Directors to be impressive, resourceful and full of hope. Our own Father Len Plazewski is the President of the National Vocation Directors and God knows he reflects all those adjectives. The Nuncio ended his remarks by sharing a letter which he received from a priest asking for the appointment of “more positive” bishops. “Check, Archbishop. And thanks for your remarks.”

The rest of the afternoon was given over to the introduction of the “action items” which the bishops will begin to debate and vote tomorrow morning. The assembly had only ninety minutes, max, to submit formal amendments to the Action Items.

Finally, my successor as Chairman of the Board of Catholic Relief Services, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, gave the assembled bishops a wonderful picture of CRS today, along with a stirring four minute video. The archbishop noted that only 22% of Church-going Catholics could identify CRS as the Church in the US’s overseas disaster relief and development agency.

Cardinal George asked the bishops assembled to support a statement which he wished to make on health care reform. We’ll download that statement for you here as soon as it is available.

+RNL

Update: Cardinal George’s Statement is now available at the USCCB website for this year’s November meeting, or you can access it directly.

Brendan Stack has now left India, where he spent the summer as a CRS volunteer intern.  The fourth and final update in the series of letters he has written is attached to this post and can be viewed by clicking here.

If you want to read more about Brendan and view his first three “Letters from India,” please click on the tag “Brendan Stack Update” at the end of this post.