Meet the Louisiana priest behind a 100-gallon crop duster blessing

iStock

It is a beautiful thing when the sacred and the quirky come together in such a way that only Catholicism can arrange. Filling a crop duster plane with holy water and blessing an entire small town definitely qualifies as sacred and quirky in the best way. This week we chat with Father Matthew Barzare, the pastor of St. Anne Church in Cow Island, La., who gave the blessing.

We get the full story from Father Matt: Where did the idea come from? Were there logistical issues? Canonical issues? What buildings got blessed? (Sneak peak: The town bar is among them.)

In Signs of the Times, we unpack Pope Francis’ Lenten message and get a special Lenten penance from our friends Stephanie Butnick and Liel Leibovitz from Unorthodox, the world’s leading Jewish podcast. We also discuss the devastating revelations of the sexual misconduct by the late founder of L’Arche, Jean Vanier.

Tell us what you think about the episode on our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and help other listeners find Jesuitical by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. Please consider supporting the show by becoming a member of our Patreon community. Patrons get access to an exclusive newsletter written by one of your hosts each week!

Links from the show

Internal report finds that L’Arche founder Jean Vanier engaged in decades of sexual misconduct
Pope Francis delivers annual message for Lent
Pope Francis recognizes the martyrdom of Jesuit Rutilio Grande and two lay companions in El Salvador
Why does it take so long for the Catholic Church to recognize martyrs of justice?
Louisiana parish uses plane to bless town with 100 gallons of holy water

What’s on tap?

Everything but the liquor cabinet (before we start our dry Lent)

Show Comments (

)

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

Provide feedback on this article

form.antibot * :not(.antibot-message) { display: none !important; }You must have JavaScript enabled to use this form.

We don’t have comments turned on everywhere anymore. We have recently relaunched the commenting experience at America and are aiming for a more focused commenting experience with better moderation by opening comments on a select number of articles each day.

But we still want your feedback. You can join the conversation about this article with us in social media on Twitter or Facebook, or in one of our Facebook discussion groups for various topics.

Or send us feedback on this article with one of the options below:

We welcome and read all letters to the editor but, due to the volume received, cannot guarantee a response.

In order to be considered for publication, letters should be brief (around 200 words or less) and include the author’s name and geographic location. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

We open comments only on select articles so that we can provide a focused and well-moderated discussion on interesting topics. If you think this article provides the opportunity for such a discussion, please let us know what you'd like to talk about, or what interesting question you think readers might want to respond to.

If we decide to open comments on this article, we will email you to let you know.

If you have a message for the author, we will do our best to pass it along. Note that if the article is from a wire service such as Catholic News Service, Religion News Service, or the Associated Press, we will not have direct contact information for the author. We cannot guarantee a response from any author.

We welcome any information that will help us improve the factual accuracy of this piece. Thank you.

Please consult our Contact Us page for other options to reach us.

Email address

Full name

Location

When you click submit, this article page will reload. You should see a message at the top of the reloaded page confirming that your feedback has been received.