New Orleans, La., May 1, 2010 / 05:37 am
Responding to the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Catholic archbishops in the region have called for prayers for those affected. Many people are watching the spill with “great anxiety,” one prelate notes, because they have barely recovered from Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina and don’t need “a man-made disaster.”
The spill began last week when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, creating three leaks in a pipe and killing eleven people.
The oil company BP has been trying without success to activate a valve on the well to cut the flow of oil, Nola.com reports. Meanwhile, the oil slick had made landfall in parts of Lousiana as of Friday afternoon.
The Archbishop of New Orleans Gregory Aymond in a Friday letter to all the parishes of his archdiocese asked for prayers for all the victims of the blast. He encouraged prayers for those who died, those injured, and their families, that “God may give them peace in their time of crisis.”