Category: News

ROME, ITALY – A small delegation of representatives from the papal charity foundation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) stood witness to the Holy Father’s blessing of the icon of the Our Lady of Sorrows, Consoler of Syrians. The icon was made in August by Fr. Spiridon Kabbash, a Greek Orthodox priest from Homs in Syria. Present in this initiative is the organization’s National Director for the Philippines, Jonathan Luciano.

Our Lady of Sorrows, Consoler of Syrians was designated to bring a dawn of hope, peace, and consolation to all Christians of the world. It shows the beloved Virgin Mary, Mother of God, seated on a throne, with the Lord Jesus Christ on her lap. Holding an orb, the icon depicts that He entrusts the care of the world to his Mother, similar to what he did with all humankind under the cross. Also in visible detail is war-stricken Syria, very much destroyed and wounded with all the unheard and unknown battles plaguing its grounds. According to an interview with Fr. Kabbash, the icon is a message of hope. “We will send it to many places of the world, because they need consolation from God. The war is too heavy for the people,” he mentioned. 

“I was personally, deeply moved by the message of the icon. It strengthened in me the challenge to rise to the mission to help the suffering Church, especially our persecuted brothers and sisters,” ACN Philippines Director Luciano shared. The icon will be travelling to all the dioceses of Syria and the whole of Middle East to spread the message of peace and consolation to all war victims. This is part of the “Console My People” campaign, an ACN initiative for Syrians. Last August, 6,000 rosaries were also blessed by the Pope for the relatives of the victims. 

“There is a greater need to be sensitive and aware of the plight of our suffering brothers and sisters, and the icon of the sorrowful mother, who, in her tears, consoles her children. Which is why I also asked the Pope to pray for the Philippines, especially the persecuted and the oppressed. He agreed, and Pope Francis requests that we pray for him as well,” Luciano added. 

The heartrending testimony of a Venezuelan doctor which we give below is a reflection of the terrible problems people are still suffering from in this South American country, and of the humanitarian crisis resulting from the scarcity and high cost of medicines in particular. It comes on top of the failures in the national electricity supply system, which is affecting the hospitals and hampering the necessary treatment of patients.

In an audio message sent to the international Catholic pastoral charity and pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN International), a young doctor, her voice trembling with emotion and close to tears, speaks of her sense of impotence at being unable to save lives, owing to the lack of medicines.

She describes how, during her shift at the Central Hospital, she attended a little girl suffering acute peritonitis, after having already arrived at the hospital with a ruptured appendix. As a result they had to apply the necessary treatment to extract the festering liquid, but they had no antibiotics for her subsequent post-operative treatment.

“Her Papa told me, with tears in his eyes, that he could not continue buying the medication, because each treatment cost 50,000 bolivars, and she needed three doses a day”, the doctor explains.

At present the minimum monthly salary in Venezuela is 20,000 bolivars, so that the father of this little girl would have had to work and save up almost 8 months salary in order to be able to purchase a single day’s treatment with the antibiotic.

In her moving account, the doctor describes how, after cleaning up the wound, she went looking for the little girl’s father to explain to him the gravity of his daughter’s condition, and found him kneeling on the floor, weeping.

“On emerging from the operating theatre, after completing the procedure, I went looking for her daddy, but couldn’t find him, because he was kneeling down, weeping in a corner, with his head against the wall.” She continues, with anguish in her voice, “I feel as though we are simply watching people die.” And she also berates the country’s political leaders for their inefficient work. “I don’t understand the politicians. This is affecting us all… We doctors can put up with being without light and without water, we can find a way of working around it, but I cannot bear to see our poorest people suffering and burying their children.”

On Tuesday, 2 April the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference published a message in which they reaffirm “the dignity of the human person and his inalienable rights” and in their turn denounce the lack of respect for human rights and the “crimes against humanity” to which the Venezuelan people are subjected, including “the deliberate imposition of (harmful) conditions of life, such as the depriving of access to food and medication”.

“Unfortunately this has been happening in our own country, beneath the complacent gaze of the authorities who have the responsibility of watching over the respect and defence of human rights”, the bishops state in their message.

The bishops urge a redoubling of prayers for Venezuela, in order to achieve “the necessary conversion”. And they appeal to the Virgin Mary to “accompany our people on the Way of the Cross they are now walking, in the hope of the Paschal liberation that was achieved by her Son Jesus Christ.”

 “In this time of legal darkness, there has been added a literal darkness”

The political and economic crisis that is ravaging Venezuela has become even worse in recent days as a result of the electricity blackout that has affected the whole country, 23 different states, since March 7 this year. According to information provided by Caritas to the international Catholic pastoral charity and pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN International), the electricity crisis has affected almost every other area of the supply chain, including water, gasoline, transport, communications and the hospitals.

“Sources tell us that the problem originated as a result of a breakdown in the central hydroelectric generating station which provides energy for 80% of the country”, the Caritas report explains. Nonetheless, the authorities of the government-controlled National Executive allege that the emergency was caused by “electronic warfare” as a result of a “terrorist cyber-attack” from abroad.

In different statements, gathered by ACN, most of the Venezuelan bishops have now spoken out in response to this grave crisis, which has left some communities without electricity for over 130 hours now, provoking chaos and consternation among the population, social tensions and looting, as well as shutting down schools and businesses.

Archbishop Ulises Gutiérrez of Ciudad Bolívar stated that “the country has been left in the dark, with blackouts throughout the country for over five days now. They have affected the hospitals and clinics, the public services, communications, banking activities, paralysing the country as never before in its history. A significant number of our fellow citizens have died through not getting the medical attention they needed, as a result of the lack of electric power.”

The Caritas report indicates that according to information from the organisation Médicos Unidos, some 20 individuals have died throughout the country, as a result of the electricity outage in the hospitals.

Bishop Mario Moronta of San Cristóbal stated that the authorities, “far from listening to the just complaints of the people, continue to harden the hearts of those who hold in their hands the solution to the difficulties, and above all to the central problem for which these same people are clamouring – namely a change of political direction and not the imposition of an unacceptable system that is not at the service of the men and women of Venezuela.”

For his part Bishop Ernesto Romero of the apostolic vicariate of Tucupita, declared that “the paralysis of the electricity supply throughout almost the whole of the country is nothing more than a demonstration of the indifference, laziness, lack of maintenance and incompetence of the national government.”

The emergency has led people to resort to desperate and unsafe measures, such as collecting water from unclean sources, eating partly rotten food and undergo risky mobilization.

Bishop Polito Rodríguez of the diocese of San Carlos announced that “Venezuela is today confronting the worst humanitarian crisis in its history as a republic; human rights are being violated with impunity. In essence, freedom and equality have been disregarded by those who are governing.”

Bishop José Manuel Romero Barrios of El Tigre has also spoken out, saying that the life of the Venezuelan people “has been subjected to a growing structural violence which, while not actually physically attacking the humanity of its people, is nonetheless expressed in the failure of those responsible for the management of society to attend to the most basic needs of the population.”

Speaking in similar terms, Archbishop Jesús González de Zárate of Cumaná called on people to raise their voices “to denounce the lies, the injustice, the use of violence, the fanatical desire to divide and control us, the repression and persecution of legitimate protest and all those things within our society that are contrary to the plan of God.”

Bishop Ángel Caraballo, the apostolic administrator of the diocese of Cabimas, added that “in this time of legal darkness, of darkness in relation to social security, darkness in relation to food, darkness in regard to civic peace, there has been added a literal darkness, an additional element which simply adds to the humiliation suffered by the Venezuelan people, through the fault of the regime, which has forgotten about people in order to sustain a dominant political system that has brought only tragedy, death, unrest and misery where ever it has been implemented.”

Bishop Oswaldo Azuaje of the diocese of Trujillo deplored the current situation and called on his people to continue “looking for the Lord in every brother who needs us. The days of the blackout were an opportunity to witness great examples of solidarity… in the sharing of food and drinking water, gasoline for the vehicles and many other examples of people sharing their sufferings and joys together.”

The message of the bishops has brought words of relief and hope to the Venezuelan people in the midst of the dark turbulence they are currently living through. Caritas announced that it will continue to actively pursue its service of “Ollas Comunitarias” (“community cooking pots”, i.e. shared meals service) in the various different dioceses, and also its programme of “medication banks”.

ACN International