In the days after two powerful earthquakes struck northern Venezuela on June 24, Catholics in Chicago gathered to pray and offer support to the Venezuelan community here.
“They are our brothers and we have a decent amount of the Venezuelan community here,” said Father Sergio Rivas, pastor of St. Mary of the Lake and Our Lady of Lourdes Parish.
Rivas celebrated a special Mass for Venezuela June 28 at St. Mary of the Lake Church, 4220 N. Sheridan Road.
The vicar general, Auxiliary Bishop Larry Sullivan, also sent information about the earthquakes and Catholic Relief Services efforts to provide emergency help to all parishes.
The two earthquakes, one with a magnitude of 7.5 and one with a magnitude of 7.2, struck within seconds of each other at 6:04 p.m. local time. While their epicenters were in Yaracuy state west of the capital city of Caracas, the hardest hit area was the coastal La Guaira state.
As of July 6, the death toll stood at more than 3,500, with more than 16,470 injured and more than 17,000 left homeless.
Caroline Brennan, director of communications at CRS, said the agency sent a team to Venezuela hours after the earthquakes. Because of infrastructure damage, the team flew to neighboring Colombia and drove in.
They are coordinating with Caritas Venezuela, Brennan said.
“It is just truly a devastating, catastrophic scenario,” Brennan said. “You have people and families living outdoors and in parks and in the street. People are searching for their loved ones. Water systems have been contaminated.”
CRS has been able to provide help in places that are still inaccessible because it is working with the local church, which was already there, Brennan said.
Their goal in the immediate aftermath is to give people what they need in the moment, meeting both physical and emotional needs as well as they can, she said.
“We’re opening church doors, parish doors, shelters, to provide blankets, comfort, food, a place to stay and that emotional care and support,” Brennan said. “We really look at assistance in a holistic way, not just providing food or water, but what does this person need to get from this day to the next day?”
Longer term, Brennan said, CRS will continue to provide support for people to rebuild their lives, meaning they have a safe place to call home with access to clean water and a job to provide for their families.
That means working with local markets and suppliers as much as possible, Brennan said, to encourage economic activity. That’s especially important in Venezuela, which has faced years of economic and political upheaval.
That upheaval was one of the causes of the migrant crisis in Chicago, which began in 2022 when Texas began busing tens of thousands of people, mostly asylum seekers, north, with little or no warning. Many of those migrants were from Venezuela.
St. Mary of the Lake Parish already had a Venezuelan community, Rivas said, and former pastor Father Manuel Dorantes worked to welcome the new arrivals.
“We are the spiritual home for many Venezuelans because during the migrant crisis, a lot of people were helped from this parish, and they were helped in many ways,” Rivas said. “We helped them find housing and even jobs and they were kind of integrated into the community. That made this community one that many Venezuelans know and love. …. We are crying with them, we are supporting them.”
Alvaro Sotelo, a catechist at the parish, said he used to live in the La Guaira-Caracas area for some years, and he has two daughters who still live in Caracas. While they were not hurt, they have friends who were injured and killed.
“Terrible. It’s a terrible situation,” Sotelo said after the Mass. “It’s incredible what is happening right now. So much suffering, so much death, people looking for housing, looking for food, looking for help. I’ve never seen anything like that before. People buried.”
He is finding comfort in his faith.
“It means everything to me,” Sotelo said. “Right now in this moment, all we have is God and our church, our Catholic church, especially in Chicago, the archdiocese is doing a lot for us, for the community.”
Parishioner Marino Marquez said he had family visiting Caracas when the earthquake struck, but he heard through his mother, who was able to contact her sister in Venezuela, and through WhatsApp messages from teenage relatives that everyone in the family was unharmed.
“I praise God, I thank him that everybody that I know is OK,” Marquez said. “But I know there are so many who died there, who are injured, who lost everything. It’s just very hard.”
Rivas said he hopes the Mass celebrated at St. Mary of the Lake helps keep the tragedy in Venezuela in the front of people’s minds.
“We are in the middle of the World Cup, and that takes so much attention,” he said. “The media people are paying so much attention just to soccer games. We want to make sure that this stays in the news. We want to make sure that people are attentive to the tragedy that is happening in Venezuela.”
Brennan said people in the United States can help by donating any amount to CRS’s relief efforts, by sharing information about the earthquakes and by praying for the people of Venezuela.
To donate, visit crs.org or call 877-HELP-CRS.