heartfelt

No Christmas for thousands in Mindanao shelters

Agence France-Presse

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines–Thousands of people in Mindanao are facing Christmas in emergency shelters after floods that left more than 1,000 people dead and another 1,000 unaccounted for.

As government workers recovered more bodies of those killed when tropical storm “Sendong” (international codename: Washi) hit last weekend, one local mayor bleakly told those left homeless or bereaved by the floods that there would be no Christmas this year.

Tens of thousands of people are jammed in crowded evacuation centers, short of water and sanitation facilities.

“There is no Christmas,” Vicente Emano, mayor of the hard-hit city of Cagayan de Oro curtly said Saturday when asked if he would be delivering his traditional holiday message.

Sendong spawned heavy rains, overflowing rivers and flash floods that wiped out whole villages, many built on riverbanks and sandbars in the coastal port cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan the worst hit last Saturday.

The government civil defence agency put the toll of dead at 1,100 with 1,079 reported missing although it remained unclear if some of the missing were among the hundreds of unidentified corpses already recovered.

The storm and floods have displaced around 330,000 people with more than 69,000 others huddled in emergency shelters.

Just hours after the latest death toll was announced, village chairman Cairunding Embader said his staff had found 16 more dead bodies on the outskirts of Iligan City.

Emano said city employees and search team members would be working through the Christmas holidays, recovering bodies and caring for those who evacuated their homes.

To deal with the hundreds of dead, with the stench of decomposing bodies in parts of the city being overwhelming, Emano said two large communal graves had been dug and unclaimed bodies would soon be buried in them.

While Christmas is normally one of the most festive times of the year in the Philippines, a largely-Roman Catholic country, few in the affected areas felt like celebrating.

“Because of this flood, I don’t know if our Christmases will ever be merry,” said Junie Legaspi, 32, a vendor who lost his house and livestock animals in the flood.

Huddled in an evacuation center, wearing an ill-fitting woman’s blouse donated to him, Legaspi fought back tears as he said his eight children would forever associate Christmas with the floods.

“This is the worst Christmas gift one can receive.”

source: INQUIRER NEWS

Prayer is the best healing method.

Pope prays for victims of ‘Sendong’

Agence France-Presse, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY—Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Day prayed for the victims of devastating floods in the Philippines and Thailand in his “Urbi et Orbi” (Latin for “To the City and to the World”) speech from the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica.

In his traditional Christmas message, the Pope said the two Southeast Asian nations had endured “grave hardships.”

More than a thousand people were killed and countless others are missing from the flooding spawned by Tropical Storm “Sendong” in southern Philippines, while 600 people died in the July-November flooding in Thailand.

“Let us turn our gaze anew to the grotto of Bethlehem. The Child whom we contemplate is our salvation! He has brought to the world a universal message of reconciliation and peace,” he told thousands of jubilant tourists and pilgrims in the sun-drenched piazza below.

“May the Lord come to the aid of our world torn by so many conflicts which even today stain the earth with blood … May he bring an end to the violence in Syria, where so much blood has already been shed,” the Pope said.

“May he grant renewed vigor to all elements of society in the countries of North Africa and the Middle East as they strive to advance the common good,” he added, following the revolts in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

Concluding his message, the Pope voiced Christmas greetings in 65 languages including Aramaic, Icelandic and Samoan to cheers from the crowd.

‘Superficial glitter’

In his Christmas Eve Mass, Benedict decried the increasing commercialization of Christmas as he urged the faithful to look beyond the holiday’s “superficial glitter” to discover its true meaning.

He presided over the service in a packed St. Peter’s Basilica, kicking off an intense two weeks of Christmas-related public appearances that will test the 84-year-old Pontiff’s stamina amid signs that fatigue is starting to slow him down.

The Christmas Eve Mass was moved up to 10 p.m. from midnight several years ago to spare the Pope a late night that was to be followed by an important Christmas Day speech.

In a new concession this year, Benedict processed down the basilica’s central aisle on a moving platform to spare him the long walk. He appeared tired by the end of the Mass and a dry cough interrupted his homily.

In his homily, Benedict lamented that Christmas had become an increasingly commercial celebration that obscured the simplicity of the message of Christ’s birth.

“Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light,” he said.

It was the second time in as many days that Benedict had pointed to the need to rediscover faith to confront the problems facing the world today.

In his end-of-year meeting with Vatican officials on Thursday, Benedict said Europe’s financial crisis was largely “based on the ethical crisis looming over the Old Continent.”

Benedict officially kicked off Christmas a few hours before the evening Mass, lighting a candle in his studio window overlooking St. Peter’s Square in a sign of peace, as crowds gathered to witness the unveiling of the Vatican’s larger-than-life-sized Nativity scene.

Security tight

Security was tight for the Midnight Mass, as it had been in recent years.

There were no repeats of the 2008 and 2009 Christmas Eve security breaches, in which a woman with a history of psychiatric problems and wearing a telltale red sweat shirt jumped the wooden security barrier along the basilica’s central aisle and lunged for the Pope.

Next weekend, the Pope will preside over a New Year’s Eve vespers service, followed by a New Year’s Day Mass.

A few days later he will celebrate Epiphany Mass followed by his traditional baptizing of babies in the Vatican’s frescoed Sistine Chapel. With a report from the New York Times News Service

SOURCE: INQURER NEWS

Love for mother

2 sisters die in saving ma

By Cai Panlilio

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—A mother dying for her children is not all that rare an occurrence, but in Herminia Felicilda’s case, it was her two daughters who died for her.

On the night of Dec. 16 when the great flood came, Naomi Felicilda, 46, and Sarah Benegildo, 50, were busy preparing for the next day’s family reunion to celebrate their mother’s 88th birthday.

The two women and another sister, Letty, were living with their mother in a rented two-bedroom house in Barangay Balulang. Their other siblings, except for sister Fe Chisley who is based in Maryland in the United States, live in nearby Opol town in Misamis Oriental and in Ozamiz City and were to travel to Cagayan de Oro to mark the happy occasion with them.

Little did the family know that the planned gathering would turn into a wake for Naomi and Sarah.

Herminia, the mother of 12 children and widowed for many years now, recalled that the electricity went off in their community at about 11 p.m. on Dec. 16.

“I heard a loud explosion outside and I asked my daughters what it was,” she said.

But before any of them could check, muddy floodwaters started pouring into the house.

The mother and her daughters made their way to a bedroom in total darkness. With the water rising very fast inside the house, they looked around for furniture to climb on to.

‘Don’t be afraid’

Naomi and Sarah turned up a wooden bed, hoisted their mother on it, and propped it up at both ends.

Herminia said she thought the ceiling had collapsed because she could feel it on her head. “They were holding the bed for me. They tried to hold on to the railings of the window so they would not drown, but the water was already too deep,” she said.

In less than an hour, the floodwaters had almost reached the ceiling of the house. But Herminia said she was calm because she knew her daughters would take care of her.

Naomi may have been the first to drown, she said, her eyes brimming with tears. She said the last words she heard from Naomi were: “Sar, I can’t breathe anymore.”

A few minutes later, she heard Sarah say: “Ma, don’t be afraid … I’m here.”

Then everything went silent, the mother said. She called out her daughters’ names, but all she could hear was the sound of the floodwaters splashing against the wall.

Herminia said that at around 5 a.m., or six hours later, neighbors passing in front of the house rescued her. Wading through the muddy water after coming down from the upended bed, she felt the thigh of one of her daughters brush against her.

She saw her children’s bodies when neighbors brought them out of the house. They were among the first taken to Bollozos Memorial Homes.

Close relationship

Letty Felicilda survived the flood only because she was unable to come home that night because of the downpour.

But Letty does not feel lucky to be alive. “How can I feel lucky when two of my sisters are dead?” she said.

It has been a week since Naomi and Sarah lost their lives, but the Felicildas have yet to schedule the interment because they are still awaiting the arrival of  Fe Chisley, who is stranded in New York.

Chisley has been living in Maryland for the past 12 years and is waiting for a flight to the Philippines as a chance passenger. It is she who financially supports her mother and sisters, according to Letty.

All the siblings enjoy a warm relationship but it was Fe, Naomi and Sarah who were particularly close, Letty said. She said the three women regularly spoke on the phone to catch up on one another’s lives.

Joe Felicilda, an elder brother, recalled that Naomi and Sarah were always welcoming when he dropped in for a visit. “Though we live far from each other, we were very close,” he said.

Viewing his sisters in their coffins, he said: “They were very loving aunts to my children.”

Naomi was unmarried, like Letty. Sarah was widowed two years ago and regularly traveled from Cagayan de Oro to Santiago, Agusan del Norte, to visit her husband’s grave.

The Felicildas are once more reunited, not to celebrate Herminia’s birthday, but to bury Naomi and Sarah, who so loved their mother that they gave up their lives for her.

SOURCE: INQUIRER NEWS