By Minaz Kerawala, Communications and Public Relations Advisor for DPCC
Responding rapidly to the Colombia earthquake, Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada (DPCC) is making an initial allocation of $50,000 to help local partners, including Cáritas Colombiana, respond to the emergency.
DPCC has also joined Pope Leo XIV in expressing sorrow, condolences for victims and prayers for the survivors. A telegram sent on the pope’s behalf to the Colombian Bishops’ Conference conveyed the Holy Father’s prayer to our Lord to “pour out upon the beloved Colombian people the gifts of spiritual strength and Christian hope.”
DPCC is now calling Canadians to be vehicles of that Christian hope by giving generously to help the survivors of the Colombia earthquake.
Colombia earthquake: disaster upon difficulty
At 7:34 a.m. local time on Monday, Aug. 10, 2026, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck the municipality of San José del Palmar, in the Chocó Department in western Colombia. While the worst effects are in the departments of Chocó, Valle del Cauca, Risaralda, Quindío and Caldas, impacts have been reported in half of the country’s 32 departments.
A day later, the official toll stood at 2,595 people injured and 224 killed, with the most fatalities occurring in Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city. The United States Geological Survey estimates it likeliest that fatalities will exceed 1,000 and that economic losses will range from US$1 to 10 billion, which would make this one of the worst earthquakes in the country’s history.
An earthquake of such magnitude would be disastrous for any people. For the people affected by this one, it may well prove doubly difficult.
Colombia appears on the International Rescue Committee’s 2026 Emergency Watchlist of the 20 countries at the greatest risk of new or worsening humanitarian emergencies. With over 7 million people internally displaced and 6.9 million people in need of aid, Colombia already had its hands full when this quake hit Chocó.
Although the country has recently made significant strides in alleviating poverty, Chocó remains one of its poorest departments. Two in three residents, the vast majority of whom are Afro-Colombian or Indigenous, live in poverty, and child mortality rates are twice as high as elsewhere in Colombia.
The factors underpinning this impoverishment―isolation, historic marginalization, an underdeveloped economy and the legacies of civil conflict―will complicate the response to and the recovery from this earthquake.
What DPCC partners are doing and how to help
Over DPCC’s decades-long presence in Colombia, the Canadian Catholic organization has forged strong links with capable partners. Cáritas Colombiana, in particular, has a vast and deep countrywide network of thousands of grassroots professionals and volunteers that it has already mobilized. Command posts have been activated in Bogotá, Quibdó, Armenia, and Cali to coordinate relief efforts.
Caeritas Colombiana will begin with addressing people’s most urgent needs, including for food, water, shelter, clothing, hygiene supplies, medication, etc. Later, systematic needs assessments will inform longer-term rebuilding, recovery and rehabilitation efforts.
This gargantuan task will take more resources than they have on hand. DPCC is urging Canadians to help by giving generously to support the people of Colombia.
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Development and Peace – Caritas Canada was established in 1967 by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in response to Pope Paul VI’s call to Catholics living in developed nations “to be in the first ranks of those who spare no effort to have just and fair laws, based on moral precepts, established among all nations.” (Populorum Progressio, 81).
Communications and Catholic Saskatoon News are supported by gifts to the Bishop’s Annual Appeal: dscf.ca/baa.