EUROPEAN CHURCHES AND the tsunami " "
An ecumenical service in commemoration of the victims of the tsunami in South-East Asia was held in Berlin Cathedral on 9 January. “We are profoundly saddened and wish to express our solidarity with all those who have suffered the loss of their dear ones”, said Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops’ Conference in his homily. “We wish to be at their side in sharing their burden of suffering and deep sadness. But we are thinking not just of short-term emergency aid, but also of aid for the work of reconstruction and development. This aid, apart from prayer, represents the only way of not succumbing to despair”. The Evangelic bishop Wolfgang Huber also spoke at the service. He said: “No one can avoid the question that Jesus himself asked: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'” Due to the scale of the catastrophe, our soul, our trust, our hope, our faith are put to the test. God seems to be hidden behind this wave. That’s why we now wish to ask God to strengthen us, support us and console us in our faith, to give us courage and strength, so that we may continue to help”. In Austria too an ecumenical service for the victims of the disaster, officiated by the diocesan bishop of Styria, Msgr. Egon Kapellari, was held in Graz Cathedral on 5 January. Bishop Kapellari recalled the biblical passages in which man turns to God to ask why such disasters happen. “But the Bible also reports that the heavens, closed and darkened by tragedy, have always opened up again”. During the Mass for the Feast of Epiphany in the cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn spoke of his visit to the places of the disaster only a few days previously and of the emotion felt during the celebration of Mass at Banda Aceh in Indonesia on 2 January: “One perceived what the orphans felt at the crib, a consolation that only He who is the source of light may give”.
