Hurricane victims in Guatemala need housing, food, says U.S. bishop

Published: 2005-12-08

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Two months after the remnants of Hurricane Stan passed slowly over Central America, Guatemalans are still desperate for emergency housing and have not yet come to grips with concerns about destroyed crops, flooded fields and a broken economy, said a U.S. bishop. "People are still kind of dazed," Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, N.Y., told Catholic News Service Dec. 2. "The worst has not hit them, unfortunately." The bishop, treasurer of Catholic Relief Services' board of directors, traveled with CRS officials to Guatemala in late November to show solidarity, "emphasize the traumatic situation there, see for ourselves and bring attention to it," he said. Bishop DiMarzio and officials from CRS, the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency, met with victims from the storm, CRS workers and Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini Imeri of San Marcos, Guatemala. In a telephone interview, Bishop DiMarzio said that the Guatemalan victims need "infrastructure assistance, food assistance and continued emergency housing."

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