After the recent earthquake that hit Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and China, Cardinal Charles Bo, president of the Episcopal Conference of Myanmar, said that now the people of the Asian country “need everything”, also peace to end the civil war.
“People need everything: food, shelter, medicines and all vital material,” said Yangon’s archbishop, in an interview with Vatican Newsafter the earthquake of 7.7 degrees that in Myanmar has left, so far, More than 1,600 dead and more than 2,300 injured. In addition, in many places there is no electricity or the Internet and the health system is collapsed.
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“More than anything else, our people need peace, not the anguish that is unleashed for everything that is suffering,” says the purple, which was in his car during the earthquake: “We saw huge craters opening on the road. People fled in search of security. It was a moment of fear for all.”
Cardinal Bo regretted the “dramatic scenes of men and women running through the streets in search of security”, remembering that it had already called “all interested parties so that urgent humanitarian support is provided, allowing access without obstacles to the affected populations and a high fire is required to all hostile groups”, which have faced for years in an internal war.
The main concern of Cardinal Bo is the distribution of aid that, due to violence, “could be hindered by the discomfort of armed groups.”
The purple stressed that the Catholic Church is already helping those affected, through Cáritas throughout the country, starting with Mandalay, which has been the area most beaten by the earthquake.
“Nature attacks, human beings forget all their differences, and if we manage to survive as a species it is because we manage to move with the tears of others that, in any place, either in Thailand or in Myanmar, they are communion.”
The cardinal then addressed his compatriots and said that he shares “his pain, we will be by his side in this moment of pain to help heal the wounds. We demonstrate it after the tsunami, we demonstrate it after the Nargis cyclone, and we will also overcome this crisis, because compassion is the common religion in times of natural disaster”.
To conclude, Bo said that Pope Francis’s words have been “the Balm of Consuelo” and that “despite his recent disease,” said his closeness, as he has done “during the last four difficult years”
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.