Geneva, Switzerland, Jan 28, 2010 / 22:55 pm
The Church in Haiti has been “painfully hit” by the earthquake along with the rest of the country, the Holy See’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva has said. He endorsed a “human rights approach” to respond to the disaster and pledged the Church’s aid to help Haitians to “a life of dignity.”
Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi’s comments came in an address to a special session of the United Nation’s Human Rights Council about recovery efforts in Haiti.
Noting the destruction of the Haitian earthquake, he offered his delegation's condolences for all the victims.
“The images of the collapsed cathedral in the capital, which have gone around the world, symbolize the situation of the Church in this majority Catholic country,” he continued. “The Church also has been hard and painfully hit by the death of many of its members, the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince and many religious, priests and seminarians. Schools, hospitals and clinics run by the Church have been destroyed.”