VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis has sent “a generous contribution” to Myanmar to help people impacted by a major earthquake in late March.
The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and the Dicastery for the Service of Charity said April 16 that the pope wanted to send the aid through their offices after “the earthquake that struck Myanmar with extraordinary violence.”
Some 3,600 people were known to have died after the 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Mandalay, the country’s second largest city, March 28.
According to the U.N. Development Program, the quake left behind widespread devastation, but assistance to the tens of thousands of people impacted has been complicated by the nation’s ongoing civil war.
The Vatican did not say how much the papal donation was.
“The contribution is intended to express the pope’s closeness to our brothers and sisters in Myanmar and is in addition to the massive aid that is arriving from churches around the world, including through religious congregations and Catholic organizations,” the press statement said.
In the country’s civil strife, Catholic churches and other places of worship have not been spared.
Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, said the Catholic Church of Christ the King in Falam, a town in the Diocese of Hakha, was bombed and destroyed April 8 by the Burmese army.
The army, part of Myanmar’s governing military junta, which overthrew the previous democratically elected government in 2021, has been fighting opposition militias for control of Falam for months.
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