Originally published at National Catholic Register
On the afternoon of Oct. 29, between 40 and 50 people had prayed the rosary at 6 p.m. and, a half hour later, the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament had begun when they were warned of imminent flash flooding.
“We’re not dead because a neighbor came looking for her mother [and warned us] while we were adoring the Blessed Sacrament,” Father Gustavo Riveira, pastor of St. George Martyr Parish in Paiporta in Valencia province, Spain, this week told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. The town of Paiporta is considered to be “ground zero” of the tragedy caused by the recent floods in Spain.
On the afternoon of Oct. 29, between 40 and 50 people had prayed the rosary at 6 p.m. and, a half hour later, the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament had begun when they were warned of imminent flash flooding.
“We are not dead because a neighbor came looking for her mother. If she hadn’t, we wouldn’t have lived to tell the story,” emphasized the Argentine priest, who criticized that citizens were not informed ahead of time: “Nobody warned us of anything.”
The parish was flooded but, using buckets, about 60 young people managed to remove
