A reader alerted me to this on the blog of Caritas.org.
A second woman was rescued by the Caritas team from the ruins of Port-au-Prince’s Cathedral.
Earlier, a Caritas organized Search and Rescue team has pulled a woman out from the rubble of Haiti’s quake. It took two hours to pull Enu Zizi from the rubble. She was in pain but ok.
Cancun Mexico Rescue Brigade and the South African Relief Team have been working with Caritas for the past week.
“The rescue of Zizi has been the best thing in the team we have experienced. It is the first time we have saved somebody´s life after such a long time after the quake. The team has got an energy boost new and we are heading out to do more work as there is still hope,” said Ahmed Bham,leader of the South African Relief Team.
The identity of the second woman is not yet know. She was about 60 years old. Sadly, the team also found the body of the Vicar General Mons Charles Benoit. They found his body, with his hands around a reliquary with a wafer inside. [Hard to know what this meant. It is either a reliquary with a relic in it, or it is a monstrance with a Host or a pyx with a lunette holding a Host. You would think that a writer from a Catholic organization would want to get this one straight. Or else… the person just didn’t know what it was?]
Mexican doctors with Caritas along with Cuban doctors are taking care of survivors at the Cathedral. People are arriving with serious wounds in advanced degrees of decomposition. The doctors have been carrying out amputations to save lives.
“The doctors, the Mexican and South African Search and Rescue teams, and the nuns who are working with Caritas deserve recognition for their bravery and generosity,” said Fr Antonio Sandoval, Regional Coordinator of Latin America, who is in Port-au-Prince. “The generosity continues and they show us how life can overcome death.”
Watch a slide show of the rescue.
The rescues have come as a huge morale boost for staff at Caritas as they work every hour in the day to meet the needs of the people in Haiti.
Solidarity and support from international members is flooding in. Caritas Congo, which works in one of the poorest countries in the world, sent $5000 for Haiti relief operations.
Loading ...
I presume that the Vicar General tried to save the Blessed Sacrament.
May he rest in peace.
That’s my thought too, Sid.
Strange that an organization that calls itself ‘Catholic’ didn’t know the difference between a reliquary and a lunette….
May he rest in peace….
This seems like it may be a translation, or written by someone with a not-so-perfect grasp of English. (I judge that by the simple sentence structure and misspellings.) Maybe they were uncertain about the English term for monstrance.
In any case, it isn’t important. May the Vicar General (and all the souls of those who died in the earthquake) rest in peace. Thanks be to God for the rescue of Ms. Zizi.
AJDS has it right in my opinion – this feels like a translation.
Or, the object was so deformed by the crush factors and the like from the earthquake that it was unidentifiable.
SidMJr said, “I presume that the Vicar General tried to save the Blessed Sacrament.”
This actually brought tears to my eyes. What better way to enter eternity? May he rest in peace.
That’s like that ex-politician from Quebec who died in that fire, rescuing the Blessed Sacrament from his home tabernacle….
“Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it.”