Another Thing Not Being Reported

The single Bolivian miner among the 33 trapped, Carlos Mamani, actually knelt down and thanked the Aymara/Inca earth and mountain goddess, Pachamama, for his life.

So yeah, you can see why it’s fairly important for the Catholic Church to keep up a strong presence in the Andes, and why the Catholic people there are being so very Catholic. Chilean modernism and atheism in the cities, and ancient paganism in the back country, would certainly tend to produce a strong need to make choices and keep them known.

I’m not sure how you can avoid reporting this kind of interesting stuff, but there you go.

The Second Miner on His Experience

The first guy who got out was kind of camera shy the whole time, so the second guy, Mario Sepulveda, made up for it. The English-speaking media doesn’t seem to be reporting his remarks, so here’s what the Chilean papers say:

He said, “I was with God and with the Devil. God fought for me and won, He kept me in His good hand; and at no moment did I fear that God was not going to get me out of this. I always knew that they were going to get me out. I always had faith in the professionals that there are in Chile, and in the Great Creator.”

He also asked, that “they please don’t treat us like artists or journalists but like mineworkers. I was born
to die harnessed to the yoke.”

Sepulveda brought rescuers rocks as presents (as was reported in the Anglosphere), and also said that the Chilean mining industry needed to make changes to prevent more incidents like this. However, he thanked the mine owner by name and also thanked other corporate people — “….extraordinary people, like those of Codelco, who worked to get us out of this.” He also thanked the doctors and psychologists “who brought us back to life. From 700 meters away, without seeing us face to face, they got us better.”

Finally, he said that he was “proud to have a government like the one we have today and of the people that are working in it,” and plugged the Chilean president.

The Chilean Miners Are Getting Out! Yay!

They’re calling it Operation San Lorenzo, which I haven’t seen reported outside of Chile. (After St. Lawrence, the patron saint of miners, and one of the saints given considerable devotion in the area.)

During the rescue operation’s entire length, they’re holding a prayer vigil in the cathedral in Chile’s capital, Santiago. The vigil began with a eucharistic procession from El Sagrario Parish to the Cathedral, led by Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz.

Another thing I haven’t seen reported in the English-speaking media: Over in Zaragoza, Spain, yesterday expatriate Chileans dressed up like miners for the procession at her apparition shrine on the feast of Our Lady of the Pillar (Pilar), to ask for Mary’s continued protection of the 33 trapped miners. Devotees came from as far as Easter Island and Japan.

The obvious Marian point to make here is that it’s the month of the Rosary; that the miners started coming out on October 12, the feast of Nuestra Senora de Pilar and Nuestra Senora Aparecida; and that 93 years ago today, October 13, was Our Lady of Fatima’s sixth apparition, when Mary said that the war was going to end and the soldiers of WWI would return to their homes. And then the Sun danced…..

Of course, the miraculous Copiapo statue of the Blessed Virgin of Candlemas is still on-site, brought by the local archbishop to stay, way back when this started, until the miners were rescued.

Here’s a translated prayer from Chile for Our Lady of Copiapo:

Virgin of Candlemas, Mother of Miners and of the people of Atacama, we come to you with the confidence and simplicity of children. We arrive with our sorrows and hopes, with our sufferings and joys, with the fatigue of work and the burden of our sins, with all that we are and possess.

Virgin of Candlemas, you are the first carrier of the Light, that is, Christ. You are our mother. You reunite us with Christ, the Saviour. You are our hope, our consolation, and our joy. You accompany us in the city, the desert, the valleys, the mines, and the sea. You are our star on the way to the Father. You are our step toward meeting Jesus.

Virgin of Candlemas, Virgin Mother of God, hear our pleas. Bless our hearths, send us work and health, teach us to listen to your Son’s word and to live it every day, so that docile to the Holy Spirit. we may build a nation of brothers and a Church of servants in your land of Atacama.