Xavier Stephen Bisits, head of the mission section for Lebanon and Syria of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), arrived in Aleppo from neighboring Lebanon on Feb. 7, a day after the disaster. ACN has already launched an emergency fundraising appeal.
“The destruction is very obvious on the streets,” Bisits told the Register of the situation in Aleppo, ravaged already by 12 years of war. “Sometimes it is hard to tell which buildings have collapsed because of the war and which buildings have collapsed because of the earthquake,” he continued.
“You can really see how the people are in shock. There are people standing in the streets, who are not willing to go back to their homes. What people are worried about is an aftershock,” he said.
Aftershocks were continuing. On Feb. 7 around 6pm there was an aftershock that was particularly frightening. “It is very cold in Aleppo,” Bisits stressed. Temperatures dip below freezing at this time of year.
“The people need blankets; they need food. The churches especially are providing that. All of the churches [the nine rites] are putting their churches, their parish halls, their salons, for people to come inside and stay warm and sleep if they don’t have a place to go to. They have also been serving meals,” Bisits said.
Many people are also sleeping inside the churches or church halls. “Last night [Feb. 7], in front of the churches especially, families have parked their cars and are sleeping in them,” he said. That way, they can go into the church hall to use the bathroom or to get some food, Bisits explained.
“They are afraid to go back into their homes until an engineer has gone in to make sure there is no structural damage. So they are waiting for that to happen before they go back inside. Then maybe they need to make some small structural repairs; maybe it is safe after all,” he said.
Helping all communities in crisis
On Feb. 8, Bisits accompanied Chaldean Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo to a mosque to visit the imam to offer blankets to some of the Muslim families displaced from their homes.
“What is tragic is this is not just a tragedy, but a tragedy within a tragedy, because the people here are so poor,” Bisits said. He said that “there is a sense of shock and despair” among the people, compounded by all the hardships they have endured for 12 years.
“First it was the war; then it was the sanctions; then it was COVID; then it was the economic collapse. Now, it’s an earthquake. It feels very unfair to everyone,” Bisits said.
Already, even before the earthquake, there were electricity and fuel shortages in Syria’s second-largest city of more than 2 million people. Amid Syria’s economic collapse, the level of poverty has reached 90%.
“Especially among the Christians remaining — they are poor families — to be able to deal with even very basic damages to their home, such as damaged water pipes, broken windows, is something that most of them can’t afford,” Bisits pointed out.
“In terms of what the Church is doing, in collaboration with ACN, I think we are thinking about three areas right now: The first is making sure that people have their basic needs met: food, blankets, shelter.”
He said ACN is looking into two or three emergency projects in Aleppo and Latakia, Syria, which was also badly hit by the earthquake.
“The second area is doing basic repairs to people’s homes so they can return. So we’re talking to the Catholic bishops about sending a team of engineers to make assessments and help people pay off those repairs so they can return to their homes. This is really the most important,” Bisits explained.
“The third, more longer term, is thinking about the damage to the churches and the possible infrastructure of the church. There were churches damaged in Aleppo, Latakia and Hama, some of it more serious and some of it less serious,” he said.
“At ACN, we have launched an emergency appeal to help with the repairs of the homes and also some of the basic emergency needs of the people. We are looking forward to collaborating with the Church. I think the people are very touched by how the Church is showing solidarity with the families by letting them inside, giving them a little bit of hope, and we hope to continue doing that with them,” he said.
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