A Louisiana church took to the heavens to bring a Christmas service to the masses – spraying vast amounts of holy water over its rural parish from a low-flying crop duster airplane.
The Rev Matthew Barzare blessed 100 gallons of water that members of his congregation loaded on to the small plane at an airstrip near St Anne church in Abbeville, checking first that all pesticides had been flushed through.
“I’ve blessed some buckets for people but never that amount of water,” Barzare told NPR. “We can bless more area in a shorter amount of time.”
The Roman Catholic church posted photographs on the Diocese of Lafayette’s Facebook page of Barzare and parishioners loading up the water, prompting commentators to suggest other areas of Louisiana in need of a good aerial blessing, such as traffic-heavy stretches of the I-10 between Lafayette and Baton Rouge.
Barzare gave the pilot instructions to focus on areas of south-west Louisiana where people gathered, such as stores, schools and other churches that he is responsible for.
“[The] area that I have to cover is a good 30 minutes to the next church, so by plane we realized it might be the easiest way to sprinkle people’s fields, rather than me going by car,” he said.
“It does have a history in our Catholic faith that priests would bless the fields and the community around certain times of year. [People] heard the plane coming so they had enough time to step out of their house and see it spraying.”
Barzare said the flight was so popular he intends to make it a Christmas tradition for his 200-family parish, next year with three times the amount of water.
