Japanese Buddhist priest discusses spiritual toll of nuclear crisis
In Japan, where nature is believed to cleanse spirits, how do people cope when treasured mountains and oceans are tainted by leaks of radiation from a nuclear power plant?
Sokyu Genyu, a Buddhist priest from a temple just 45 km (28 miles) west of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeast Japan, is drawing attention to the less visible scars from the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. As a member of a government panel to come up with a blueprint for rebuilding after the deadly earthquake and tsunami on March 11, Genyu is adding the people’s voice — and a different view — to debate on dealing with the loss of homes, jobs and communities.
“We need to treat the situation in areas affected by radiation separately,” said Genyu, head priest of the Fukujuji Temple and also an award-winning author, told Reuters. “It’s not just about getting compensation.”
His small town of Miharu has welcomed thousands of residents who have evacuated from around the nuclear plant, still leaking radiation after being struck by the tsunami.
Damage to the environment has been especially hard on local communities, where farmers and fishermen have traditionally associated nature with god, building shrines to pray for rich harvests and to ward off accidents at sea, Genyu said. “God is the symbol of nature, what people worship as a natural force that can be violent and is uncontrollable,” he said.
“Mountains and oceans have purified us but now those mountains and oceans are contaminated,” he said. “We could see the very foundation for our religious beliefs break down, because it is no longer able to purify us.”
Christchurch’s damaged cathedrals, photos before & after NZ earthquake
In addition to all the death and destruction we’ve been reporting in our news reports (see the latest here), the earthquake on Tuesday in Christchurch, New Zealand has caused significant damage to the city’s two cathedrals, especially to their trademark spires.
Here are pictures by Reuters photographer Simon Baker of the damage to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament (Roman Catholic) and Christchurch Cathedral (Anglican), with pre-quake pictures below them.
Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament:
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Here is the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament before the quake:
More pictures of the destruction on the Catholic blog Transalpine Redemptorists at home.
Christchurch Cathedral:
Christmas of misery for many in calamity-hit Haiti
Maritza Monfort is singing along to a Christmas carol in Creole on the radio, but the Haitian mother of two is struggling to lift her spirits. “I sing to ease my pain. If I think too much, I’ll die,” said Monfort, 38, one of over a million Haitians made homeless by a January earthquake that plunged the poor, French-speaking Caribbean nation into the most calamitous year of its history.
With a raging cholera epidemic and election turmoil heaping more death and hardship on top of the quake devastation, Haitians are facing an exceptionally bleak Christmas and New Year marked by the prospect of more suffering and uncertainty.
The January 12 earthquake killed more than a quarter of a million people and snuffed out what had been some encouraging signs of revival in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest economy. Following hard on the quake’s heels like an apocalyptic horseman, the cholera epidemic has killed more than 2,500 Haitians since mid-October and is still claiming victims daily, confronting the United Nations-led international community with one of its toughest ever humanitarian assistance tasks.
“Yesterday my mother almost died because she got cholera. I had to run with her to the hospital. This Christmas is a Christmas of misery,” Monfort told Reuters as she cleaned with soap and water the inside of the plastic tent where she lives with her children in the Place Saint Pierre quake survivors’ camp in Port-au-Prince’s hillside Petionville district.
There are no lights, tinsel or festive messages in sight in the squalid crowded tent and tarpaulin camps housing tens of thousands of earthquake survivors that carpet most of the available open spaces in rubble-strewn Port-au-Prince. “We cannot decorate dirty tents where we are living in misery … we’re not in the mood to celebrate Christmas,” said Juliette Marsan, 35, another occupant of the Place Saint Pierre, Petionville camp.
Peruvian faithful pay homage to Lord of Miracles
Thousands of worshippers dressed in purple robes paraded a revered icon through Peru’s capital this week in a tradition dating from 1687 when a mural depicting the same image of Jesus escaped unscathed in a powerful earthquake.
The procession of the Señor de los Milagros (Lord of Miracles), a mural picturing a dark-skinned Christ that is said to have been painted in a shrine by an Angolan slave, has drawn crowds of Roman Catholic devotees for centuries.
The icon is a copy of the mural, which is revered for its powers to cure the sick and protect against tremors in the Andean country. Originally worshipped by Afro-Peruvians, the Señor de los Milagros has become Peru’s best-known icon and has inspired worshipers around the world.
“The image survived the great earthquake of October 20, so now it is believed that miracles occur in October,” said Manolo Ganoza Quino, a member of the brotherhood that takes turns bearing the heavy replica enshrined in gold on their shoulders during a 14-hour procession through Lima.
Facing the image, groups of women in lace veils walked backward, lending their voices to a solemn marching band and fanned incense toward the image adorned with bunches of lilies and heart-shaped charms made of tin. President Alan Garcia and his son Federico Danton, also dressed in purple habits, saluted the icon from the balcony of the government palace.
Chanting Haitian voodoo celebrants honor quake dead
Dressed in white, shaking decorated gourd rattles and singing praises to “Olorum Papa” (God the Father), several hundred practitioners of Haiti’s voodoo religion held a public ceremony on Sunday to honor those killed in the January 12 earthquake.
While several Christian ceremonies have been held to mourn the hundreds of thousands of quake dead, this was the first national commemoration by Haiti’s voodoo religion, which has had to defend itself against accusations by some Evangelical preachers that it somehow caused the deadly natural disaster.
More than half of Haiti’s nearly 10 million people are believed to practice voodoo, a religion brought from West Africa several centuries ago by slaves forced to work on the plantations of their white masters in what was then the rich French Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue. The religion is recognized by Haiti’s state and protected by the constitution.
To the sound of rattles and drums, the celebrants held a Booroum, a voodoo ritual which they believe sends the souls of the dead “under water” so they can be cleansed and return to life as better beings. “Hounkou Bolokou Djavohoun Bohoun”, chorused the worshipers, repeating an ancient voodoo incantation intended to encourage the souls of the dead.
I had been originally been looking for some thing I saw this morning on the computer about what I thought was Haiti and came along this little bit of information. Very interesting. It has been a year since the quake and I can’t imagine anybody anywhere holding in their emotions during the past year.Considering, but knowing voo-doo they probably did.I myself know no voo doo but I wear across around my neck and when I think about it, it moves. Anything is possible in these weird and unsure days here in America. I can only imagine what it is like in Haiti. I intend to find out by studying the peoples of Haiti one year later after the quake. Not study them so much,more like find out where they are and what they do everyday. Where ever they may be. I want to know what they need the most. Maybe…just maybe… I can help.
Irish clergy abuse victims torn between Dublin monument and Haiti aid
One of the healing measures suggested when Ireland’s Catholic clerical sex scandals shocked the country last year was a proposal to erect a monument in Dublin to all the youths abused for decades at schools and orphanages run by religious orders that looked the other way. The idea, proposed by the government’s Ryan report last May, won so much support that half a million euros were earmarked for the project. The government appointed a group to consider what the Irish Times called “the most difficult public art commission in the history of the state.”
It’s just become even more difficult because one group of clerical abuse victims has now said the funds should instead be donated to victims of the Haiti earthquake. The gesture would “genuinely mean more to victims of clerical abuse than a piece of stone on O’Connell Street,” the victims’ group Right of Place said last week at a meeting with Prime Minister Brian Cowen. O’Connell Street is Dublin’s main thoroughfare, an ideal place for any memorial.
Others disagree.
Christine Buckley, who works at the Aislinn Centre to support victims, said she recognised the deep suffering of Haitian people. But Ireland, whose government and citizens have already contributed millions in aid to Haiti, should still be able to afford just over 3 euros per each child affected by abuse, she said.
The Ryan commission that issued the shocking report about abuse committed throughout much of the past century recommended that the monument should have the words of an 1999 government apology inscribed on it:
“On behalf of the State and all citizens of the State, the Government wishes to make a sincere and overdue apology to the victims of childhood abuse for our collective failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue .”
Beyond that, it is unclear what the monument, if built, would look like. The Irish Times said in November it should be “less like an official war monument and more like a Holocaust memorial,” adding that it had to be “dignified and angry, beautiful and raw, defiant and ashamed.”
Haiti quake raises fears of child-eating spirits
The earthquake that shattered Haiti has unleashed fears that child-eating spirits, mythological figures entrenched in Haitian culture, are prowling homeless camps in search of young prey.
The ‘loup-garou,’ which means ‘wolf man,’ is similar to werewolf legends in other parts of the world, but in Haitian folklore it is a person who is possessed by a spirit and can turn into a beast or even a dog, cat, chicken, snake or another animal to suck the blood of babies and young children.
Haitians fear loups-garous in the best of times and even more since a powerful earthquake wrecked the capital of Port-au-Prince two weeks ago, killing as many as 200,000 people and forcing hundreds of thousands more to sleep outside in vast camps or on the streets.
Most of Haiti’s 9 million people are Roman Catholics but many also practice voodoo, a religion with African roots. The belief in loups-garous cuts across religious identity and is most strongly adhered to among Haiti’s poor, which are the majority in the most impoverished country in the western hemisphere.
These “souls” and “God” concepts that you speak of are about as real and scientific as the wolf-men that these people think are stalking their children! Hah!
VIDEO: Rescuers recover body of Haiti archbishop killed in quake
A Mexican rescue team has recovered the lifeless body of the Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot of Port-au-Prince from the rubble of his residence a week after the massive earthquake that devastated Haiti. Here’s the Reuters video report:
We ran several pictures of the city’s ruined cathedral here.
Port-au-Prince RC cathedral in ruins after Haiti earthquake
Our photographers in Haiti have produced many sad images of the widespread death and destruction from Tuesday’s massive earthquake, some of which are collected in a slideshow here. Following are shots of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Port-au-Prince in ruins. Among the dead in the quake was Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, who the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano reported was found lifeless “under the rubble of the archbishop’s residence.”
(Credits: Kena Betancur, Kena Betancur, Jorge Silva, Eduardo Munoz, Reuters TV)
Oldcreative apparently isn’t an old-time Catholic. A collection was held this morning at most Masses this Sunday THROUGHOUT THE WORLD (Catholic=universal)for Haiti.
Now how did oldcreative help “these good citizens in abject need”? Probably the way most secular elites do… With a snarky post…
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