"It was a miracle of God"

Here's something in today's paper:

As Quake Leveled Church, a 'Miracle' Of Survival in Peru

Associated Press
Monday, August 20, 2007

PISCO, Peru, Aug. 19 -- More than 300 relatives and friends filled the towering colonial-era adobe church to pay tribute to the family patriarch, a popular man who managed a fleet of minibuses in this dusty port city and died of a heart attack at age 67.

Just as the Mass was ending, the earth began to heave and the church collapsed. Two minutes later, hundreds of friends and distant relatives were dead or dying in a giant pile of rubble.

But Alejandro Espino's immediate family -- all three generations -- survived unscathed. "It was a miracle of God," said Espino's widow, Dora.

As the Rev. Jose Emilio Torres finished the service, a magnitude-8 earthquake struck, leveling 85 percent of this city of 90,000. At least 540 people were killed.

"The movement was up and down, up and down. The earth jumped. Then it changed direction," swaying laterally, said the Rev. Alfonso Berrade, 67, who was in the priests' residence across a courtyard. "I thought I was dead."

Screaming and begging for mercy, people ran for the exits or clung to columns flanking the pews. Espino's family stayed put.

"We hugged one another while everything fell all around," said Vilma Espino, 38. ... Vilma Espino said at least 50 members of the extended family were killed.

Some miracle. 9% of the people killed in this earthquake - "at least" - were in this church at this funeral and in this family. But it's a "miracle of God" that some of them weren't killed.

Against this mindset the godselves contend in vain, if I may put it that way.