By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
The Catholic Church in Chile is leading the faithful in a continuous vigil of prayer for the success of the rescue of 33 miners who have been trapped underground since August 5.
Zenit News is reporting that Bishop Alejandro Goic Karmelic, president of the Episcopal Conference of Chile, has invited the entire nation to join him in prayer as the rescue effort gets underway, calling it a “propitious moment to unite the whole Church in this prayer of faith and hope.”
The vigil began with a Mass at 11:00 p.m. last night, just hours after the specially designed rescue capsule was lowered into the newly dug 28 inch-wide emergency shaft from which the miners will be pulled to freedom.
According to the Washington Post, just before the capsule was lowered for the first time, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera told Manuel Gonzalez, the rescuer who would man the capsule in its first dive into the mine: “All Chileans are with you, and may God be with you. And may you bring us the miners.”
It took more than 18 minutes for the capsule to travel deep underground to where the miners have been trapped since thousands of tons of rock collapsed on the gold and copper mine in early August. A special camera captured the sight of Gonzalez entering the mine shaft where the men have been living for 69 days, hugging several of them before loading the first miner, 31 year-old Florencio Avalos, into the capsule. After securing him, the capsule slowly began to make the return trip to the surface.
When Avalos emerged into the cold night of Chile’s northern Atacama Desert just after midnight, all of Chile rejoiced along with family members on the scene who wept and cheered while medical personnel quickly led the miner away for a checkup.
When the youngest miner was retrieved, 19 year-old Jimmy Sanchez, he was embraced by his waiting father minutes after he emerged from the capsule. The oldest miner, 63 year-old Mario Gomez shared a long and emotional embrace with his wife of 30 years and was seen pumping his fist in triumph as he was carried away on a stretcher. The only Bolivian miner in the group, Carlos Mamani, shouted “Gracias, Chile!” as he emerged from the capsule.
The last miner scheduled to be brought to the surface will be Luis Urzua, 54, the shift chief who has been serving as the leader for the group. Speaking by phone from the mine yesterday morning, he reflected on what it was like to be confined in such tight quarters, miles beneath the earth’s surface, for 10 long weeks.
“We have had a stage here in our lives that we never planned for,” he said. “I hope to never live again like this, but that’s the life of a miner.”
It was Urzua who kept order in the mine and rationed the scarce food supplies they had during the first days of their entrapment until more supplies could be provided.
“We had to be strong,” Urzua said. “All the workers in the mine fulfilled their roles.”
Even though the capsule rises at a rate of only about a yard per second, rescuers hope to successfully remove all 33 men from the mine by the end of the day.
Once done, they will go down in the record books as having survived the longest underground than anyone else in the history of mining accidents.
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