“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 the remaining water after the flash flood had receded, according to the parish priest.
Riveira described the Dantesque scene, where the streets and houses are still full of mud, with ruined cars piled up and belongings destroyed by the flowing water.
“We have mountains of mud, reeds. People have taken furniture outside to clean their houses. There is immense devastation, which goes well beyond the mud and the mire,” he explained.
A few days after the floods, at least they no longer lack food or water, but parish Caritas hasn’t been able to resume its normal activities, he said. “We had to throw away everything we had, because everything was covered with mud. We had nothing left.”
They haven’t been able to properly store the aid they have received, thanks to the generosity of thousands of Spaniards, because Caritas’ facilities haven’t yet been able to be cleaned.
Thus, what is functioning is what the priest calls “hand-to-hand solidarity, which is not so structured” but reflects the exceptional work carried out on numerous occasions by parishioners who have also lost everything in the floods.
“They’ve shown great solidarity, truly exemplary. People have come to the fore that we’ve never seen before to this extent. This is very beautiful and opens the heart,” Riveira commented.
Looking to the future, the priest expressed the need to restore calm: “We must remain calm in order to start over. The law of life is to always be starting over. Woe to us the day we give up on starting over and looking to tomorrow with eyes of hope.”
