With rescue efforts ended, lost miners remembered at church services

Published: 2007-09-12

HUNTINGTON, Utah (CNS) -- The wrenching search for six lost miners was over, leaving only funerals, a public memorial service and a private committal service for the three Catholic miners attended by family members. A funeral Mass for Luis Hernandez and Juan Carlos Payan was celebrated Sept. 6 at Mission San Rafael in Huntington. Concelebrated by Father Donald E. Hope, pastor of the mission and other parishes in the area, Father Omar Ontiveros of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City and Father Oscar Martinez of St. Joseph Parish in Ogden, the Mass focused on resurrection. Father Hope called the funeral Mass "a bittersweet occasion," and encouraged family members to remember the miners as "those who taught you how to love one another. Now we ask God to bring them to himself." A second funeral Mass, for Manuel "Manny" Sanchez, was to be celebrated Sept. 15 at Notre Dame de Lourdes Church in Price. Also dead as a result of the initial mine cave-in were Kerry Allred, Don Erickson and Brandon Phillips. Three miners working to rescue the six died in a second cave-in Aug. 16. They were Dale Black, Gary Jensen and Brandon Kimber.

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