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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.

Asked what he wants to be when he grows up, 11-year-old Diallo Bratcher didn’t pause for a moment before he replied with the most serious expression he could produce. “A lawyer,” he answered. Why? “Because I talk a lot,” Diallo said, and this time his almost ever-present, infectious grin returned. Diallo, his 10-year-old brother and 8-year-old sister are, along with 141 other youngsters, part of Camp St. Vincent, founded 100 years ago to give poor, inner-city children a three-month summer opportunity to enjoy fresh air, nature and themselves. As the St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore-operated camp celebrated its centennial birthday party outside Baltimore’s Carroll Park field house Aug. 15, the organization’s executive director, John Schiavone, paused to reflect on the irony of the camp now being made up of a majority of homeless children. Sixty percent of the children, who range in ages from five to 11, are either homeless or live in transitional homes, like Diallo and his siblings.