Vatican sends emergency funding to Haiti following Hurricane Matthew devastation

Pope Francis has sent $100,000 of aid money to hurricane-stricken Haiti to assist flood victims.

The donation was sent through the Pontifical Council Cor Unum to be distributed through the hardest-hit dioceses, the council said in a communiqué on Friday.

The first round of funding was meant to be a “concrete expression of Pope Francis’s feelings of spiritual closeness and fatherly support for the people and places” that have been affected, it said.

The papal contribution is part of the Church’s network of humanitarian aid, which includes help from different bishops’ conferences and numerous Catholic charities.

The community organisation Caritas Haiti and its umbrella unit Caritas Internationalis has launched its first appeal for emergency food aid and sanitation kits for 13,500 people, and to provide counselling and education in preventing diseases, like cholera, which commonly affect areas lacking sanitation and clean water.

Hurricane Matthew has displaced thousands of Haitians in the country’s south-west, and 1,000 people are reported to have died.