Another image of Our Lady remains intact after a devastating fire in Chile.
Newsroom (11/02/2023 7:15 PM, Gaudium Press) Forest fires, which began in the first week of February, are devastating some regions of Chile, and have already left at least 26 dead and more than a thousand injured, according to the latest assessment made by the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service. There are currently 260 fires still active, which have devastated 274,000 hectares.
In Santa Juana, of the 16 parishes in the region, only three remain standing. The parish priest, Fr. Ricardo Valencia, reported that on the first day of the fires he went out to visit all the chapels, “because I needed emotionally to see my chapels, because I feel damaged. They are the chapels where we celebrate faith with the brothers, vigils and weddings.”
In each of the damaged chapels, he took photos and recorded videos, but with the intention of making “a very brief visit, because I was interested in reaching the families, the community workers.” However, amidst the rubble of one of the chapels in the commune of Santa Juana that was destroyed by the fires, he found an image of the Virgin Mary intact.
The image of Our Lady is located in the Tres Rosas sector, where the San Ignacio de Loyola chapel used to be, and was brought in the summer of 2020 by the Duoc Concepción missionaries, who “got to know the community in the midst of a social crisis.
The parish priest had to stay longer near the image of Our Lady, because many people were arriving, and they wanted to “pray next to the image of Mary, because they felt that the Virgin next to a burning chapel was as if Our Lady was next to them.
I wanted to spend three minutes, and yet I spent more than half an hour with people who were saying to me ‘Father, I’ve come to pray.’ I had to stay with them and it was a grace and a joy for me,” Father Ricardo stressed.
During a visit to the area, the Auxiliary Bishop of Concepción, Bishop Bernardo Álvarez, took a photograph of the image of Our Lady in front of the cross next to the burned chapel. This photo was later shared on social networks by the Archbishop of Concepción, Monsignor Fernando Chomali, who “allowed many brothers to know about the fire, to pray for us, like Mary at the foot of the cross” told Fr. Ricardo Valencia.
With information iglesiadeconcepcion.cl
Compiled by Teresa Joseph
