In 2017 Hurricane Maria led to the deaths of 3,000 people in Puerto Rico, shut down the power grid for six months and caused at least $100 billion in damages to 300,000 homes and hundreds of Catholic church properties, some of which are centuries old.
Bishop Alberto Figueroa Morales, who now leads the Diocese of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, remembers being in the rectory basement at his former parish where he served as a priest in the Archdiocese of San Juan when Hurricane Maria made landfall. His mother was with him, and they hid in the bathroom fearing the winds would knock out the windows and everything else. When the skies calmed, it was morning again.
Bishop Figueroa Morales recalls emerging from his place of shelter to survey the wreckage.
The first thing I heard was from the people we have living near the parish. One lady was telling another, ‘¡María, estamos vivos!’ (‘María, we are alive!’). And the other answered her, ‘Yes, we are alive!’”
The Church’s quick response
While joyful to be alive, those who survived on the island needed help quickly. The U.S. federal government was slow in its response, but the Catholic dioceses on the island were not. Neither was Catholic Extension Society. The minute that bishops regained communication capabilities, their first call was to Catholic Extension Society. “Help us,” they pleaded.
Catholic Extension Society was the first organization to wire money to Puerto Rico, allowing the Church on the island to immediately respond to the pastoral and humanitarian needs unfolding in its midst. In the photo below, Father Gabriel Alonso visits a mountainside community struggling to survive after Hurricane Maria.
Three months later, an unexpected policy change prompted by a U.S. Supreme Court decision led to a new opportunity for houses of worship to receive rebuilding money from the federal government. The only catch was that churches had to act fast to stake their claim, and they needed seed money to get their recovery claims organized.
Knowing that time was of the essence and that dioceses were still—literally and figuratively— operating in the dark, Catholic Extension Society stepped up in early 2018 and organized an islandwide initiative.
Within six weeks, we helped the Church meet the application deadline. Hundreds of applications were submitted. This provided access to hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to rebuild churches and schools. Next, in early 2019, Catholic Extension Society assembled a full-scale recovery team, using the support of leading experts to guide all dioceses down the long and complex road to accessing and using recovery funds.
In January 2020 Puerto Rico was struck by a series of catastrophic earthquakes, which toppled buildings like Immaculate Conception Parish in Guayanilla. Father Melvin Díaz Aponte is seen here surveying the damage.
Thankfully, communities immediately benefited from the capable support of our on-island recovery team to access federal funding to rebuild their felled schools and churches.
The Church that stands with the poor
The six dioceses of Puerto Rico operate with very few financial resources as they serve a population where nearly half the people live in poverty.
Map: Percent of Puerto Rico population below poverty
“I have friends in the States, and they send me help sometimes because they know the situation of the Church in Puerto Rico,” said Bishop Figueroa Morales.
He continued, “Sometimes they send me what a parish [in the United States] receives in a weekend collection. I don’t think that any, any church collection in Puerto Rico has a quarter of that or half of that in a year.”
The disaster-struck dioceses could not have afforded the upfront cost needed to provide damage assessments without Catholic Extension Society’s coordination of disaster experts and initial financial backing. Catholic Extension Society provided $18 million to cover the upfront management costs, most of which will ultimately be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This capital has been a lifeline, ensuring the dioceses could pursue all the federal funding available to them.
Five of the six Puerto Rican dioceses are participating in the recovery program:
Thanks to this upfront work and financing, the Catholic Church in Puerto Rico is now positioned to receive an estimated $400 million in funding to rebuild more than 600 damaged facilities, which include historical, centuries-old Catholic churches, schools and mission chapels serving the island’s most remote communities.
One of these churches is San Jose Church in Old San Juan. It endured significant damage. It is the second oldest church in the Americas.
Each provides so much hope, care and charity to the people of Puerto Rico.
Archbishop Roberto González Nieves of the Archdiocese of San Juan said,
Every family needs a home, needs a place, needs a structure, needs a building to gather, to celebrate, and to pray.”
“When a place is destroyed, one needs to rebuild and begin again. As a Church within a sacred place, that beckons us to a more contemplative appreciation of life and a more spiritual undertaking in our daily living,” he added. “We come together to help one another in that spirit of resiliency and hope in the face of tragedy.”
Building resilient churches and schools
To date, $328 million of the estimated $400 million have been “obligated” (that is, awarded) by the federal government to the Puerto Rican dioceses, thanks to immense and tedious work funded by Catholic Extension Society. The Church in Puerto Rico can now begin the long-awaited reparation of facilities and continue its vital mission.
| Diocese | Total # facilities | Millions of dollars |
|---|---|---|
| San Juan | 312 | $223 |
| Arecibo | 113 | $58 |
| Caguas | 136 | $30 |
| Fajardo | 39 | $11 |
| Ponce | 13 | $6 |
| Total | 613 | $328 |
Catholic Extension Society’s recovery team also secured an additional $43 million in a competitive grant program, which will enable Catholic schools to receive “hazard mitigation funding.” This grant will allow these structures to be rebuilt more resiliently and in an eco-friendly way to serve as safe shelters during future disasters, which will ultimately save lives.
In 2022 Catholic Extension Society formed a steering committee among the Puerto Rican bishops to coordinate the rebuilding process across all dioceses of Puerto Rico. Recently, the bishops issued an RFP (request for proposals) to find a construction management firm that will help ensure a timely, cost-effective, FEMA-compliant rebuilding of church facilities across the island.
Many reputable firms possessing both the expertise and manpower have submitted bids to work with the Church. Construction projects to rebuild damaged facilities are expected to begin in the coming year.
The bishops’ steering committee also authorized a strategic plan that examines how best to use FEMA funds to rebuild appropriately sized Catholic schools in key locations to best educate the children of the island, including the poorest of the poor.
The progress we have made in Puerto Rico to date gives us hope. This ambitious project will not only restore the Church but reconstruct churches of all types and locations, from the most remote mission chapel in the mountains to the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista—one of the oldest Catholic churches under the American flag.
This project will also create jobs and provide an economic stimulus to towns across the island that have suffered through a yearslong downturn. Indeed, it promises to have a generational impact on the island.
A relationship rooted in history and trust
We are not in this project alone. Apart from Catholic Extension Society’s financial and coordination work, we count on the additional support of our major funding partners who are contributing to various aspects of this program.
There is no precedent or prior example in the history of Christianity in America for a project of this immense size and scale.
Catholic Extension Society was able to emerge as the pivotal organization in this recovery for two main reasons.
The first is that Catholic Extension Society has supported Puerto Rico for more than 115 years, dating back to its earliest years as a territory of the United States.
The second is that Catholic Extension Society has always maintained a trusting and collaborative relationship with the Catholic leaders of Puerto Rico. This mutual confidence helps move this complex project forward, even when we encounter challenges.
Catholic Extension Society makes routine trips to Puerto Rico, such as when our president, Father Jack Wall, and chancellor, Cardinal Blase Cupich, visited a damaged school in Vega Baja.
“I have been in parishes in the countryside. I have been in parishes in the cities. Catholic Extension Society was always present,” Bishop Figueroa Morales said.
With the expertise of our recovery and construction partners as well as the perseverance of our dioceses, bishops, pastors and all the faithful, we know that the Puerto Rican Church will one day rise again.
Catholic Extension Society works in solidarity with people to build up vibrant and transformative Catholic faith communities among the poor in the poorest regions of America. Please support our mission!
