PRAYERS for the people of Haiti and the rescue efforts were led by the Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Rev Alan Smith, in a service on Sunday. The Bishop, who was speaking at a service in Barnet Vale, had already issued a call to prayer and for generous givin

PRAYERS for the people of Haiti and the rescue efforts were led by the Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Rev Alan Smith, in a service on Sunday.

The Bishop, who was speaking at a service in Barnet Vale, had already issued a call to prayer and for generous giving by the churches in the St Albans diocese.

In his sermon on Sunday, the Bishop said that people had watched with horror as estimates of the death toll in Haiti had risen alarmingly, hour by hour.

He went on: "We have been confronted with heart-rending stories of whole families being crushed by falling masonry, of children being pulled out of piles of rubble, terribly injured and having to cope with the knowledge that all other members of their family have been killed.

"Amazingly a few survivors are still being pulled out of collapsed buildings alive. Such suffering touches the deep primal fears that inhabit our dreams. It is the stuff of nightmares."

The Bishop said such natural disasters raised question about whether there could be a God but maintained there were two pointers in the Christian gospel - that Jesus entered into the pain and suffering of the world by dying on the cross and the belief in resurrection.