On Monday, February 6, at 4:17 a.m., a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Syria and neighboring Turkey, followed by three more during the day. This massive earthquake was a devastating catastrophe, which in Syria’s case, added to the misery and despair caused by eleven years of war.
According to Monsignor Mounir Seccal, National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies in Syria, the situation in Aleppo, the epicenter on the Syrian side, was catastrophic, with chaos and desolation, much of which is visible still today. “The inhabitants had to flee their homes to take shelter in their cars and in the streets in the pouring rain,” he said. “The first thing we did to shelter the population was to open the churches and monastery gardens.”
“This nightmarish earthquake has just added another thorn to the wounds of our agonizing population. Syria is living through a real tragedy,” said Monsignor Seccal. According to the latest UN reports, more than half the population is living in poverty.
The country is suffering from a shortage of products vital to daily life: no electricity, no heating oil, no petrol, and inflation due to the devaluation of the Syrian pound. It's a real state of despair and anguish.
“Today, months after this disaster, we are coming to terms with the scale of the catastrophe and realizing that we alone are unable to meet the financial needs to repair the damage,” Monsignor Seccal said. Most of the foundations of the houses have been hit and are in urgent need of restoration so that the inhabitants can return to their homes in complete safety.
“We Christians in Syria, the cradle of Christianity, have been suffering for a decade now, with a generation of teenagers who have known nothing but fear and insecurity,” he said. “We are the salt of this once-blessed land, and we hope to remain so. (Before 2011, we made up 12% of the population. Today, we're less than 4%, which means we've shrunk by more than half.)”
You can help missionaries such as Monsignor Seccal continue to support the faithful who have stayed to protect the cradle of Christianity by helping financially and psychologically: “Pray that we servants of the Church may have the strength to give comfort to our people so that they may rediscover faith and hope for better days.”
At least 57,759 people died due to the tremors. In Turkey, some 14 million people, meaning 16 percent of the total population, were affected by the deadliest natural disaster in modern history.
In the city of Antakya, the scene today is one of devastation: streets once filled with life, still today, months from the tragedy, echo with the muffled crunch of glass and rubble under the machines cleaning the debris, and the birds in the sky are primarily birds of prey.
Yet after an incredibly generous initial reaction, the world seems to have moved on, said Father Adrian Loza, national director of The Pontifical Mission Societies in Turkey.
"Even if the situation is no longer in the news, as a Church and as a society, we have an incredible challenge ahead of us, so I beg you to continue thinking of Turkey and Syria, and praying for Turkey and Syria," he said.
"We still need your help, because rebuilding will take years," said this Argentine Franciscan friar appointed head of The Pontifical Mission Societies Turkey in 2022. "And as the government rebuilds the infrastructure, we also need to rebuild the churches that were destroyed, because they are our home, the places where we come together in prayer, and also our biggest evangelizing tool."