Bishop Dennis Sullivan signed a check earlier this month in the amount of $159,933.94, collected by parishes of the Camden Diocese in a special collection for victims of the tornado that tore through Oklahoma earlier this year.
On May 31, the western suburbs of Oklahoma City were hit by a tornado the National Weather Service rated days later as an EF5. Nineteen people were killed in the storm and the flooding that followed.
Eleven days earlier the suburb of Moore also bore the brunt of an EF5 tornado. It hit mid-afternoon May 20, killing 24 people. More than 200 others were injured in that storm.
The tornado killed 24 people, 10 of whom were children, including seven from an elementary school that was destroyed. About 350 families lost their homes.
In a letter to all the U.S. bishops, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, requested they urge their pastors to take up a special collection over the coming weeks to assist in recovery efforts from the tragic storms in Oklahoma and from other natural disasters that the Catholic Church and the country “may suffer this year.”