The Banner has a subscription to republish articles from Religion News Service. This story by Aleja Hertzler-McCain, was published July 2, 2026 on religionnews.com. It has been edited for length and Banner style. The Banner added the fifth and sixth paragraphs and the last four paragraphs to provide context for the Christian Reformed Church.
The day after twin earthquakes rocked northern Venezuela, Presbyterian Pastor Ricardo Corzo Moreno was doing two jobs at once: calming his family through the aftershocks and helping launch a 24-hour prayer and collection center for survivors. For days after the June 24 quakes, as aftershocks rocked Caracas, his family took turns staying awake in case they needed to flee their building. Eight-year-old Miranda didn’t sleep through the night until June 30, when the family brought the children to relatives in Barquisimeto, more than 200 miles away.
“Not even in my worst nightmares did I imagine a situation as apocalyptic as the current one,” Corzo Moreno said in Spanish.
The death toll as of July 2 was 2,295, likely an underestimate. More than 46,000 people have been reported missing on a website where families can share details, and it’s unclear how many have been found. Across Venezuela, faith leaders who are themselves affected by the disaster have become its first responders. Corzo Moreno is working with Bishop Keison Carrillo of the Emanuel federation—about 300 evangelical churches with roughly 20,000 congregants in Venezuela—whose collection effort up to July 2 had run entirely on donations from Venezuelans themselves.
“There’s been an impressive internal solidarity, like nothing we’ve seen before,” said Carrillo, who spoke in Spanish. They’ve learned that the most necessary items are medications, diapers, drinking water, food, tents, mattresses, and bedding. They’ve also worked to respond to specific needs, like preparing breakfast and lunches for 60 doctors working in emergency response.
World Renew, the Christian Reformed Church’s relief and development agency, began U.S. and Canadian fundraising campaigns on behalf of recovery for Venezuela on June 29. Because of its membership in the Canadian Food Grains Bank, World Renew in Canada was able to join the Humanitarian Coalition/Coalition Humanitaire’s response and leverage donation matching by the Canadian federal government. Eligible donations made in Canada, up to $2 million, will have double the impact until the end of the matching period, July 14.
“We are devastated by what has happened in Venezuela and are thankful that we will be able to respond with the help that is needed,” said World Renew co-director Carol Bremer-Bennett. World Renew staff are in contact with Venezuelan partners to ensure the resources reach where they are needed most. “We have responded for decades to disasters, and one thing that we have learned is that the gathering of supplies in North America and shipping them to a chaotic crisis that’s happening in another part of the world is not the most efficient or effective response.”
Many Christian organizations are doing likewise. Corzo Moreno, director of public and institutional relations for the Fundación Todas las Cosas en Común (All Things in Common Foundation), met June 26 on Zoom with almost 100 Christian leaders from Latin America, North America, and Spain to pray together and begin to discuss coordinating aid.
Bishop Angel Marcial, who leads the Church of God denomination throughout Latin America, including 155 churches in Venezuela, was among the leaders who joined the call from Florida, and he expressed enthusiasm about the possibility of collaboration among Christian leaders. “Everything we have to do in unity to bless Venezuela, we’re all ready to do it,” he said, speaking in Spanish.
Marcial envisions three phases of recovery—the current phase focused on food and water, a phase focused on counseling and trauma that taps psychologists within their networks and a phase focused on rebuilding.
On June 30, the Rev. Berla Andrade de Vargas, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Venezuela, went with a team of two engineers to do a safety inspection of eight houses in Guarenas and Guatire, in the suburbs of Caracas. “We went to tell the people that they weren’t alone—to tell them the Presbyterian church of Venezuela is present in the midst of the disaster,” said Andrade, speaking in Spanish.
Those inspections, along with pastoral and practical accompaniment, will form the backbone of the Presbyterian church’s response in Venezuela, according to a plan laid out by Andrade. The plan also calls for international assistance: prayer, as well as medications, drinking water, food and financing for reconstruction.
In a letter to Venezuela's Presbyterians, Andrade describes the local church as the expression of God's sovereign and loving care, “converting each congregation into a space of refuge and community solidarity.”
Venezuelans are already stretched from years of economic crisis, and Carrillo and Corzo Moreno both told RNS they worry that there will not be enough sustained international attention for the medium and long-term impacts of the earthquakes.
Aid coming from international Christian organizations include a La Guaira emergency hospital run by Samaritan’s Purse; food, water, sanitation, emergency shelter, health care, and trauma support from the U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services; and need assessment and food distribution with the World Food Programme through the support of the global charity World Vision.
Gonzalez, who lives outside of Caracas in Guarenas and is sheltering her own family from La Guaira, said prayer and staff devotionals have been a balm. “ I have received every day the notice of a dead friend or a dead neighbor,” she said. “ When you pray and when you understand that even though we have a calamity, God is still there, it will make you feel better and it will make you feel secure.”
World Vision is also partnering with the US-based National Latino Evangelical Coalition and Latino Evangelical Alliance, which unites evangelical groups across Latin America.
José Piñero, a Christian Reformed pastor in Venezuela, shared with Harold Caicedo of Consejo Latino, about how his church and neighbors are faring in the situation. Caicedo shared an English translation of Piñero’s letter with The Banner.
“It must be taken into consideration that this crisis has not even passed its first stage,” Piñero wrote. “The impact is being felt in human lives—the wounded, the orphaned, and other vulnerable populations—but also in an unprecedented economic blow in the midst of an economy that was already devastated.”
Even while noting the crisis “is colossal in scale,” Piñero said, “we are in a position to respond in significant magnitude … our capacity lies in our technical and human resources, but not in material resources.” He concluded, “We are resilient and we know we will rise from this. We trust that God will provide us with the accompaniment we need in these circumstances.”
World Renew, also, has been in contact with Pastor Piñero and the CRC churches and plans to partner with them. The agency is gathering funds through worldrenew.ca/venezuela-earthquake (Canada) and worldrenew.net/venezuela-earthquake (U.S.).
c. 2026 Religion News Service