BRISBANE Filipino chaplain Fr Marce Singson left “with a heavy heart” for typhoon-devastated Ormoc City where his 11 siblings and 73 nephews and nieces are battling to cope with the aftermath of super Typhoon Haiyan.
Fr Singson flew out from Brisbane on Sunday, November 17.
“I will head directly to Ormoc City – next to Tacloban City, the hardest hit by the typhoon – to comfort and to console my homeless and starving members of my family and relatives,” he said.
Fr Singson was due back in Brisbane on Friday, November 22.
The following day he was to celebrate an 11am Requiem Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Church in Acacia Ridge for typhoon victims.
“Filipinos from Sunshine Coast all the way down to Coolangatta will converge to the venue to pay our last respect for those who perished from the calamities,” he said.
The monster storm, thought to be the strongest to have ever made landfall anywhere in the world in modern history, hit the Philippines on November 8.
Most recent estimates were that more than 3600 people had died. Authorities have resorted to mass burials, with one report of 500 bodies being placed in a mass grave.
Fr Singson’s preparations came as Caritas announced plans to deliver more than 4000 temporary shelters to families in the poorest villages of Ormoc where Super Typhoon Haiyan destroyed 80-90 per cent of homes.
Caritas Australia international programs manager Jamie Davies said tarpaulins, hygiene kits and other household items were coming by boat from Cebu City and being stored in the Catholic school gymnasium in Ormoc for distribution.
Parramatta Bishop Anthony Fisher celebrated a Memorial Mass for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan at 7.30pm in St Patrick’s Cathedral on Monday, November 18.
The disaster was deeply felt in Parramatta diocese, which takes in much of western Sydney, where one in five Catholics is either Filipino born or a child of Filipino-Australians.
Apostleship of the Sea Australia national director Peter Owens said the organisation was supporting Filipino seafarers who made up a 40 per cent or 1.2 million of seafarers world-wide.
He said the close-knit nature of Filipino culture meant the disaster would have a profound impact.
“Their culture is based around extended families which means people displaced by the typhoon will be moving in with families which are often themselves already under stress,” he said.
Mr Owens said AOS Cebu port chaplain Fr Ulysses Desales has been helping with relief efforts in Bantayan Island, Cebu, one of the areas most affected by the storm.
“Fr Desales said almost all the houses have collapsed, trees have been uprooted and debris is all over the place,” he said.
“He also said he saw people holding up placards with the words: ‘Please help us. We need water, food, medicine’.”
Fr Desales has turned the seafarers’ centre in Cebu into a hub which he can use to mobilise assistance, together with his team of volunteers.
“AOS has seafarers’ centres all over the Philippines from which support is being provided,” Mr Owens said.
“It also has a network of centres around the world providing free telephone cards and internet access to allow Filipino seafarers to contact their families back home.”
The Australian Salesians Missions office, which has a provincial office in Cebu, has launched an appeal for victims of Typhoon Haiyan.
Salesian Missions Australia director Br Michael Lynch said there was an “urgent need for emergency shelter, food, clean water and medicine.
“Funds will be distributed through the Salesian Provincial Office in Cebu,” he said.
Caritas Australia estimates nearly four million people have been displaced with about 550,000 shelters expected to be uninhabitable and un-repairable.
So far Caritas is assisting more than 68,000 families and 340,000 individuals in many of the worst hit areas.
