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LIMA, Peru – When it comes to dealing with disasters like the powerful earthquake that struck Peru’s southern coast Aug. 15, the Catholic Church has an advantage – the pastors know the people. In responding to an emergency, “you build on your strengths,” said Aaron Skrocki, South American emergency program manager for Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops’ overseas humanitarian and development agency. “Having a local (parish) community in place that knows the people better than any local government official does makes it much easier to get a response effort up and running.” Skrocki arrived in Peru the night after the earthquake and traveled Aug. 17 to Chincha, Pisco and Ica, the three cities nearest the epicenter.

LIMA, Peru – When a violent earthquake shook southern Peru in 2001, it jolted the Ica River out of its bed, flooding part of the city of Ica and forcing Celinda Terrones and her children to spend the night on the roof of their house. When a magnitude 8 quake struck Aug. 15, however, their former refuge turned deadly. The initial tremor swelled to a rolling shudder, buckling the walls of their adobe dwelling. As Terrones and her family fled, her adult daughter fell while carrying her 5-year-old son. The daughter stumbled and fell in such a way as to try to protect her son, and falling bricks battered her arms. Then they were in the street, watching as the roof caved in. “Everyone ran out of their houses screaming and holding their children,” Terrones said. “Our house just collapsed.”

GUATEMALA CITY – Church leaders say 80 million pages of secret police records being reviewed by the government promise Guatemalans a rare chance to rewrite the history of their violent land. The moldy records were found by accident in 2005 in an abandoned section of a police compound in Guatemala City. Some of the records date back more than a century, their faded pages describing the daily bureaucracy of repression employed for decades by Guatemala’s government. Of most interest to investigators are records from 1975 to 1985, the most violent period of Guatemala’s civil war, during which 160,000 people were killed and 40,000 disappeared.

CARACAS, Venezuela – Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino of Caracas said the Venezuelan bishops’ conference might have a special meeting to discuss Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s proposed constitutional reform. The proposal “concerns the life of the Venezuelan people, of the Catholics of Venezuela and the rights of everybody,” he said. The cardinal said Venezuelan Catholics should participate in the reform process, to make it “a peace treaty for all Venezuelans and not a declaration of war.” The reform proposal is to be debated in the National Assembly, but it is not clear whether the assembly or the people as a whole will vote on it.