VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI visited homeless earthquake victims and damaged buildings in central Italy on Tuesday (Apr. 28).
“The whole church is here with me, beside your suffering, a participant in your pain,” Benedict told tent-dwelling survivors outside the city of L’Aquila, about 70 miles east of Rome.
A 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which struck in the early morning hours of April 6, killed almost 300, left more than 65,000 homeless, and damaged historic churches and artwork in medieval L’Aquila and nearby.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as Vatican Secretary of State is the No. 2 official in the Catholic Church, presided over a mass funeral for most of the victims on Good Friday. The Vatican said the pope postponed his visit in order not to disrupt rescue and relief operations.
Benedict met with a further delay on Tuesday morning, when heavy rain and winds forced him to travel by car instead of helicopter, causing him to arrive an hour behind schedule.
After addressing and praying with tent-dwelling survivors, Benedict visited L’Aquila’s medieval Basilica of Collemaggio, whose roof was damaged by the quake, where he venerated the remains of Pope Celestine V, who died in 1296.
The pope then met with university students outside the ruins of a collapsed dormitory, where seven students died.
The destruction of the 44-year old residence and other relatively new structures in L’Aquila has provoked suspicions that their construction fell short of anti-seismic norms.
Benedict seemed to allude to such concerns in a speech to rescue workers, when he called on the “civil community” to make an “examination of conscience, so that at every moment responsibilities never fall short.”
