Holy Land prays for rain, end to Mount Carmel blaze

The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal has sent a message to all the priests of the Patriarchate inviting them and the faithful to pray for rain in the Holy Land, which is suffering a severe drought and battling a disastrous blaze on Mount Carmel.

“Rain has not come to our Land for a long time now”, he writes in the message. “The Church used to pray during these difficult times, to implore the Lord’s mercy and appease his anger caused by our sins. We remember what happened with the Prophet Elijah when the Holy Land suffered from seven years of drought. The prayer of the Prophet obtained the miracle. It rained abundantly”.

Archbishop Twal has designated the second Sunday of Advent, for this intention, and the following Friday, December 10, as a day of penance, during which the faithful may fast or practice abstinence (from meat or smoking or other ways and means possible). They can also visit the church and pray for a period of time.

The prolonged drought has created ideal conditions for the spreading of a deadly fire on Israel’s Mount Carmel, which is now in its fourth day. A Boeing 747 from the U.S. carrying 20,000 gallons of water and fire retardants _ joined the battle Sunday against the inferno in northern Israel, giving officials hope they can bring the country's worst forest fire under control by the end of the day.

Two teenage brothers were arrested Saturday in connection with the fire, which has killed 41 people, most of them prison guards whose bus was trapped by the fire while they were en route to evacuate a prison.

Although the forest fire raging in Israel's north is small by international standards, it is considered a calamity in Israel, where only 7 percent of the land is wooded. The Carmel forest makes up 5 percent of that forested land and nearly half of it has burned down.