(UCAN) Long before dawn broke over Chilaw on Sri Lanka’s western coast, Father Alex Nilantha, the administrator of the town’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral, was awakened by the frantic barking of the Church’s dogs.

It was still dark at around 4 a.m. on 28 November, and their persistent scratching at his door cut through the silence with an urgency he couldn’t ignore.

An instinctive sense of danger forced him to look outside — and at the unfolding disaster that would engulf entire villages before sunrise.

The Deduru Oya, a major river in northwest Sri Lanka — the mouth of which empties into the Indian Ocean, near Chilaw, where the Cathedral is located — was already overflowing.

Floodwaters were swallowing streets and rising so fast that rooftops were the only visible markers of where family homes stood.

A small boat, was seen with three villagers struggled against the current on the main road. Without hesitation, Father Nilantha arranged a boat and set forth through the rising waters.

From house to house, through submerged lanes and swirling debris, he and a small team ferried terrified families to safety.

Mothers clutched infants; children cried out from shadowed doorways; the young begged for help for sick relatives.

Clothes floated ,where people once stood, in water more than a meter high in places.

“From six in the morning until six in the evening, we didn’t stop,” Nilantha said. By nightfall, the Cathedral compound had become a refuge for nearly 800 displaced people — Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim alike.

Within hours, people from all religious communities began arriving with truckloads of cooked meals and supplies. “It was solidarity at its purest,” Nalintha said.

Community leaders assured him that they would “not let anyone go hungry,” as if to answer his fears about feeding such a crowd.

“We admire this priest, who stood with us throughout the crisis, looked after us from 29 November to 05 December, and ensured that everyone received food,” said Antony Sebastian, 53, who Nalintha rescued along with his family.

Despite visible signs of exhaustion, Nalintha “went from house to house in a boat, and greeted all with a warm smile and offered them help,” Sebastian said.

As well as caring for those at the Cathedral, Nalintha also took food to shelters in two other parishes, two schools, and coordinated five medical clinics.

Across Sri Lanka, the devastation left by the flooding was staggering — 639 people confirmed dead with 210 missing, entire villages washed away, livelihoods destroyed, and roads and farmlands buried under mud.

As state agencies struggled to cope with the catastrophe, the Catholic Church mobilised one of the country’s largest community-based relief networks.

Torrential rain and strong winds brought by Cyclone Ditwah overwhelmed rivers, triggering widespread flooding and landslides across the island.

Churches across the country set up emergency shelters. Parishes prepared meals, arranged medical care, organised volunteers to clean homes, assisted pregnant women and children, distributed dry rations, and provided tools for basic repairs.

Caritas Sri Lanka, the Church’s social arm, moved quickly with immediate relief efforts — some 1.3 million Sri Lankan rupees (some US$4,200) in cash grants and three million dry ration packets.

Father Luke Nelson Perera, Caritas Sri Lanka’s national director, said subsequent phases will include supplying school uniforms, construction materials, cooking utensils, essential medicines, milk powder, and psychosocial support.

Across many dioceses, the scale of the relief efforts was immense, with more than 100,950 people housed in 70 Church-run temporary shelters.

People lived in these temporary shelters for three to seven days until the waters receded and they could return home earlier this month.

Catholic schools, convents, and institutions provided food, clothing, and medicine. Parish priests visited affected families; some organised mobile medical clinics for hundreds at a time.

Among the stories Nilantha related was that of a man who fought through chest-high water in search of help. His wife and children were later found balancing on a beam inside their flooded home — a family saved because someone kept rowing.

“I may not be very strong,” the priest said, “but God is with me. He works through thousands of hands to support the victims.”

On that fateful morning, Nilantha’s hands were among the first to help. But they were soon joined by thousands more — an entire nation answering the call of its most vulnerable as the waters rose.