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Bishop Robert Brennan blesses a parishioner following a special Mass at St. Bartholomew Church in Elmhurst on June 29 to pray for the victims of the recent devastating earthquakes in Venezuela. (Photo: John Quaglione)<\/p>\n\t\t\t\tBishop Robert Brennan blesses a parishioner following a special Mass at St. Bartholomew Church in Elmhurst on June 29 to pray for the victims of the recent devastating earthquakes in Venezuela. (Photo: John Quaglione)<\/p>\n
ELMHURST \u2014\u00a0The suffering in Venezuela is \u201cunspeakable,\u201d Bishop Robert Brennan told the Tablet before parishioners\u00a0gathered for a special Mass\u00a0at St. Bartholomew\u00a0Church\u00a0dedicated to the people of Venezuela following\u00a0the\u00a0recent\u00a0devastating earthquakes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe pray for the people in the city, those who have died, those who are injured, their families,\u201d Bishop Brennan said. \u201cWe pray for those involved in\u00a0search\u00a0and\u00a0rescue. And now, it\u2019s been a few days, so prayers are urgent.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bishop Brennan celebrated\u00a0the\u00a0Mass\u00a0organized by\u00a0the\u00a0diocese\u2019s Venezuelan Apostolate, led by Father Ernesto Alonso-Aguila.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very sad situation\u00a0because there\u00a0are\u00a0a lot of people suffering because of the loss of their loved ones,\u201d Father Alonso-Aguila\u00a0told The Tablet. \u201cThere is a lot of uncertainty at this point, but there is also a lot of solidarity with people around the world who are helping and want to help.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The twin earthquakes struck\u00a0on\u00a0June 24 near San Felipe,\u00a0in northern Venezuela, west of Caracas.\u00a0A\u00a07.2-magnitude\u00a0quake was followed\u00a039 seconds later\u00a0by a\u00a07.5-magnitude\u00a0quake, which\u00a0was\u00a0the strongest to hit Venezuela in over a century,\u00a0devastating\u00a0Caracas\u00a0and the coastal state of La Guaira.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
At least 1,700\u00a0people have died, 5,000\u00a0are injured, and\u00a0roughly 2,500\u00a0structures have been damaged or destroyed\u00a0as of June 29,\u00a0according to Venezuelan\u00a0officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bishop Brennan said the tragedy hits close to home for many parishioners who have\u00a0family\u00a0members\u00a0in Venezuela.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very good opportunity for us to be together, to pray, to be united in our prayer, and to be on the lookout for ways that we, as a church, and we as a nation, can be of assistance,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bishop Brennan\u00a0has asked\u00a0all pastors in the diocese to\u00a0conduct\u00a0special monetary collections for the victims in\u00a0Venezuela. The donations\u00a0will be\u00a0sent to Catholic Relief Services to provide humanitarian aid and support relief efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Father Alonso-Aguila said volunteers have been collecting\u00a0nonperishable food, medicine, clothing, and baby supplies\u00a0that the parish will send to\u00a0the country.\u00a0There were two collections during the\u00a0special\u00a0Mass, as well.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very sad.\u00a0We\u2019re\u00a0all thinking about them,\u201d Consuelo Roque, a lector at St. Bartholomew, said of\u00a0those affected\u00a0by the earthquakes.\u00a0\u201cWe are praying with them, and\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0going to try to help them in the best way possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Grace\u00a0De\u00a0La Rosa, another lector, said a\u00a0friend, a\u00a0Venezuelan priest now living in Boston,\u00a0told her his mother lost her apartment in the earthquake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very painful for me what happened there,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0De La Rosa, who is from the Dominican Republic. \u201cThis is just the beginning. We have to keep praying for them, and hopefully the\u00a0government is going to help recuperate the country and the people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Father Alonso-Aguila closed with an appeal beyond the Catholic community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to call the people of goodwill, not only Catholics,\u00a0everyone\u00a0who wants to help \u2014 this is the moment to do it,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst and\u00a0foremost,\u00a0with our prayers, and also with everything that we can give to them, because they really are in need of everything at this point.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bishop Robert Brennan blesses a parishioner following a special Mass at St. Bartholomew Church in Elmhurst on June…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-282179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}