{"id":396,"date":"2009-04-06T09:32:45","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T09:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/another-kind-of-passion.html"},"modified":"2009-04-06T09:32:45","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T09:32:45","slug":"another-kind-of-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/another-kind-of-passion.html","title":{"rendered":"Another kind of Passion…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Earthqauke.jpg\"<\/span>The toll in the earthquake that struck the beautiful Abruzzo region of Italy is nearing 100, with another 1,500 injured and 40,000-50,000 homeless. NYT report here<\/strong><\/a>…<\/p>\n

\n

The epicenter was in L’Aquila, a picturesque Medieval fortress hill town, where most of the deaths occurred, officials said. Aftershocks shuddered through the area, hampering rescue efforts as people clawed through the debris by hand, frantically seeking survivors.<\/p>\n

“Some towns in the area have been virtually destroyed in their entirety,” Gianfranco <\/font>Fini, speaker of the lower house of Parliament, said in Rome before the chamber observed a moment of silence…<\/p>\n

…Reports from the areas said that at least 26 towns had been affected by the earthquake. Four children died in the hospital after their house collapsed, ANSA reported. A fifth child died in the village of Fossa, eight miles from L’Aquila.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And more…<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Hundreds of L’Aquila’s 80,000 residents rushed from their houses and gathered in the central Piazza Duomo, where nuns from a local convent attended to frightened residents, ANSA reported. <\/p>\n

“There are many palazzi that are cracked — walls have fallen in,” Joshua Brothers, an American missionary, told CNN. He also noted that a church in town had been badly damaged. “The bell tower has crumbled,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said many people had poured out of their homes after the quake. <\/p>\n

“There were people calling for people that they know. They were very worried,” he said. “Most people are outside with luggage.”<\/p>\n

People in surrounding cities in the Abruzzo region and the neighboring Marche region also rushed into the streets, fearing their houses would collapse. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone sent a telegram in the name of Pope Benedict XVI to Archbishop Giuseppe Molinari of L’Aquila. Here is the text of the papal telegram<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“The dramatic news of the violent earthquake which struck the territory of the archdiocese has filled the Supreme Pontiff’s heart with consternation, and he charges Your Excellency to pass on the expression of his heartfelt participation in the suffering of the beloved people affected by the tragic event. Giving assurances of his fervent prayers for the victims, especially the children, His Holiness asks the Lord to bring comfort to their families and, while giving affectionate words of encouragement to the survivors and the people who in various ways are helping in the rescue operations, he sends everyone his special apostolic blessing”. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The toll in the earthquake that struck the beautiful Abruzzo region of Italy is nearing 100, with another 1,500 injured and 40,000-50,000 homeless. NYT report here… The epicenter was in L’Aquila, a picturesque Medieval fortress hill town, where most of the deaths occurred, officials said. Aftershocks shuddered through the area, hampering rescue efforts as people clawed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nAnother kind of Passion... - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/another-kind-of-passion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Another kind of Passion... - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The toll in the earthquake that struck the beautiful Abruzzo region of Italy is nearing 100, with another 1,500 injured and 40,000-50,000 homeless. NYT report here… The epicenter was in L’Aquila, a picturesque Medieval fortress hill town, where most of the deaths occurred, officials said. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}