Dear Friends,

After 45 days of hectic work, the Church and its group of committed volunteers take a pause from the long journey of rebuilding our people’s lives to express our deep gratitude to all of you who stood by us and the people of Myanmar in their hour of darkness.

Thousands are returning home, or where their home used to be. Children return to school, knowing some of their friends will not be here. Farmers are returning to a slowly healing land, wounded by the marauding sea on that fateful day. The Ayeyawady River is subdued into serenity after straddling killer waves and exhibiting dead bodies for a month.

It has been a heavy month for the Church. In Dedeya, Fr. Benedict and his group valiantly buried dead bodies, exposed to sun and rain for a month. It is a challenging work, for days together, many villages were a valley of bones, and now they are rested with dignity in a place. Elsewhere the caregivers, our volunteers, faced threats to their own physical and psychological health, living amidst contaminated water and rotting bodies. Some have to be carried back to Yangon for medical attention.

All the parishes have been turned into disaster response teams. Food and non-food items are distributed through them. Many times the Buddhist monks are fellow sojourners in this act of mercy. Just a month ago, no family had wish or wherewithal to send their children [to school]. This month, with our support for uniforms, books and fee, hundreds of children are returning to the school. This return is healing and is the first signs of life to the battered communities. Hundreds of temporary shelters are coming up. Seeds are distributed. The Church is designing a healing process through psycho-spiritual training and trauma healing services.

The nightmare is slowly replaced with hope. The Catholic Bishops Conference of Myanmar (CBCM), all the religious and faithful, Karuna (national Caritas) and the Caritas International reiterate their commitment. We thank all of you at this juncture. Our work has been very challenging, done under great restrictions on access. But you all made our work rewarding by standing by us with your great fellowship. Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI evinced fatherly concern from the day one. He mourned with the Myanmar Bishops when they met him for their ‘ad limina’ visit. His Delegate Archbishop Salvatore Pennachio rushed in by the first plane available and personally interacted with the survivors and the caregivers all through these days. The churches from various nations contributed their mite and prayers to our work.

It has been a month of pain and sorrow for our people. But the tide is turning, because people like you felt their pain from far and rushed with assistance. The Church could save lives because of you. On behalf of those thousands who survived we owe a deep debt of gratitude to all of you. Once again we realize that the Universal Church is a mother who reaches out where there is a tear, a human brokenness.

It is still a long journey. The full recovery will take at least two years. Cyclone Nargis was nature’s nuclear attack on our people. There are villages destroyed without any trace. The farm lands are polluted with the sea water. The human asset is diluted, social assets destroyed, natural assets mutilated with wanton destruction. The poor of Myanmar, already handicapped by some of the worst permanent disasters, are crawling back to normalcy.

So our journey continues. The urgent needs are for setting up homes, shelter and regenerating the livelihoods through supply of seeds to farmers, encouraging micro enterprises. This has been a month of challenge, but a blessed challenge because we felt the power of human oneness, the unstinted support of the Mother Church and great generosity of human sprit among Myanmar’s people through their selfless service to their suffering brothers and sisters.

Our heartfelt thanks to every one of you,

In Solidarity,
Archbishop Charles Bo, S.D.B.

A letter from Archbishop Charles Bo of Myanmar:

As the waters raged in the predominantly Christian village, the monks from the nearby monastery were on the noble mission of saving people. A monk swam across the currents to pull out a woman who was about to be dragged by the marauding river. In the far off Phyapon, where Church workers linked to Caritas Internationalis were distributing aid to the survivors, they choose Buddhist monks as their partners in distributing aid to non-Christian villages.

Archbishop Bo reaches out to those affected by the cyclone

All religious groups were made victims by the cyclone. All places of worship — monasteries, clergy houses and convents — bore the brunt of the deadly cyclone. Nargis, in its monstrous ferocity, tore through many of the famous places of worship of all religions. In Aima, in the Pathein Diocese, Fr Andrew Soe Win offered his life as a supreme sacrifice in trying to reach his marooned people. His body was found after 18 days.

Nothing deterred them from the sacred duty of saving lives. In the predominately Buddhist country, where Metta and Karuna (mercy and compassion) are the major tenets of a great religion, compassion broke forth like a healing stream after the demonic deluge. Churches and monasteries became the refugee camps. With death and mayhem threatening them in their villages, thousands took refugee in sacred spaces, seeking coping and mutual consolation. Even before the government could move in, or the do-gooders and NGOs could move in, spontaneous charity sprang forth with Buddhists feeding Christians and Christians feeding the Buddhists, etc. Nargis broke many things in an evil way. Goodness broke all parochial borders that fateful night, when death danced arrogantly across, wounding a nation.

In Bogalay, the Hindu temple opened its portals to feed the multitude. In the ravished streets of Yangon, Muslim merchants were distributing food to the starving masses. More poignant was the response of many poor and lower middle class people. They collected whatever they had and every weekend they treaded across in aid convoy to far off Labutta. Nargis stripped naked a nation with violence, but people of all faiths are clothing it now with compassion.

With other Christian communities, Catholics threw in everything into rescue — money, material and manpower. Many young men and women volunteered to go to the risky villages, strewn with dead bodies of people and animals. The first psycho-social assistance came from nuns who risked their lives by undertaking dangerous boat travels, without life jackets, etc. They were the first ones to hold mothers who lost their children, carried orphans and consoled a grieving community with prayer and simple presence. Hundreds of seminarians were the first rescuers, clearing the villages of debris. All these are done under extreme restrictions. Through the Caritas Internationalis network, assistance continues.

Compassion is the common religion in the post-disaster phase. In Myanmar people lived with various tags — religion, color and tribe. But now Nargis taught us all that human tears have no color, no religion and no tribe.

June 2, 2008 marks the start of the school year in Myanmar and also one month after Cyclone Nargis. However, for so many children there will be no school to go to. For the children in the delta region their lives have been turned upside down. Many of them lost their parents and their homes.

Last week I visited a village called Aima and some surrounding island villages called Pha-ya-lay-gone, Pein-ne-gone, Ta- yoke-gone, and Lein-maw-gone. Aima village is in Labutta township in the southern delta region and is very difficult to reach.

It took almost 10 hours to get there by boat. There, I met families who are still struggling to survive and feed their children. In this area all the schools have been destroyed. For the children of Aima, the horror of the cyclone still haunts them.

Many children cry at night and when it rains. The children fear the worst and re-live the trauma of the night of the May 2. In this village there are so many inner wounds that must be healed over time.

To date very little aid has been able to get to these communities. For the first two weeks, the only aid received by these people was from the Catholic Church.

They told me that without this, they would not have survived. The government now only supplies two cans of rice per person per day, which is not enough for people to live on. In some cases people have been asked by the government to leave temporary camps and return to their villages. In many of the villages there was still no shelter, food or clean water and the government only supplied them with a few kitchen utensils.

My trip to Aima also demonstrated how important it is for the Catholic Church to continue our work and ensure that we support communities as best we can. To date we have been able to supply food, clean water, tarpaulins for shelter, cooking utensils and medical supplies to approximately 20,000 people in Labutta township.

We now must continue to support them, firstly to survive but also in rebuilding their lives. The people I met remain modest in their requests, and ask only for food and shelter. (more…)

Here is a message from Myanmar’s Rangoon Archbishop Charles Bo, a Caritas Internationalis partner helping to bring vital relief to people struggling to recover after Cyclone Nargis. Catholic Relief Services is supporting the cyclone emergency response of the Caritas network, which will reach more than 50,000 people with food, household living items, shelter, medical and psychological care, and means for child protection. (more…)