Church's tsunami relief work builds bridges with Sri Lankan Buddhists

Published: 2005-12-29

BERUWALA, Sri Lanka (CNS) -- When Father Bernard Reyhart visits villages around St. Anne's Parish to supervise the construction of houses for tsunami victims, Buddhists kneel at his feet in respect. "This is the traditional way the Buddhists show their reverence to their monks. But, now they are showing the same respect to me, which is really surprising," said Father Reyhart. The priest said this change in attitude of the Buddhist people came after the parish distributed several boats to local Buddhist fishermen and started building houses for the Buddhists rendered homeless by the December 2004 tsunami. But this success in building bridges with the Buddhist majority came with hiccups -- some parishioners criticized Father Reyhart for "going out of his way" to help the Buddhists without distributing the relief material made available by Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella agency for Catholic charities, to local Catholics.

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