Religion: The Promise

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The Super-Constellation Pinta of Iberia Airlines was coming in for its scheduled landing at Bermuda on the run from Havana to Madrid. It was 11:15 Pm. Captain Don Fernando Bengoa, 37, was at the controls. Also aboard was Captain Fernando Rein-Loring, 53, the airline's chief pilot. As the Pinta let down for the landing, the right wheel of the tricycle landing gear stuck. Captain Rein-Loring and Pilot Bengoa tried unsuccessfully to dislodge it with the emergency hand pump. Captain Bengoa made several low passes over the field so the ground crew could inspect the wheel by searchlight. Then the Spanish flyers took the plane upstairs to decide what to do.

Ego Vos Absolve. Back in the cabin, Padre Carlos Gonzalez Salas, 34, of Tampico, Mexico, a tall, athletic-looking priest with the skin of an Indian, was chatting with his seat mate and looking out of the window. Gradually he began to realize that something was wrong. When a crew member explained the situation to the passengers, Padre Gonzalez Salas clutched his scapular and said a prayer. "I began," he said later, "to experience a great feeling of anxiety."

Meanwhile, Captain Rein-Loring and Pilot Bengoa were too busy to be nervous. The Bermuda airport had called Lockheed, the plane's manufacturer, in Manhattan and via short-wave radio put a landing-gear specialist in touch with the Constellation. He advised the pilot to try a more powerful auxiliary system built into the gear for just such emergencies; but it only broke a hydraulic line and made a normal landing out of the question. Captain Rein-Loring decided that the plane would have to be landed on its belly.

For two hours more the Pinta circled over Bermuda to lighten its gasoline load and give the crew time to prepare the 25 passengers with pillows beneath their safety belts and show them how to hold their heads down before the crash. Some of the children began to cry. An old lady became hysterical. Padre Gonzalez Salas prayed harder. One of the passengers asked him for absolution. With permission from Captain Rein-Loring, the priest went through the plane preparing his fellow passengers for death with the act of contrition and prayer.

"I was very much upset," he says. "I don't remember whether or not I recited the words well. But I remember referring to everybody, saying, 'Ego vos absolvo.' There was only one Protestant aboard—I think he was a German archaeologist. All he asked was whether the absolution was valid for him. 'Yes,' I answered, 'but everything depends on whether you have faith.' "

As the plane circled for its landing, Padre Gonzalez Salas quietly pledged himself, if the passengers were saved, to crawl on his hands and knees from the bottom to the top of the Spanish hill called Cerro de Los Angeles. At last the Constellation seemed to hover for a moment over the runway; then it touched and skidded, screaming and careening, while a U.S. Air Force crash truck sped alongside ready to spray it with a flame-extinguishing foam.