Yeah, Rydia is right, as far as I can tell. Again, you have to remember that Sephiroth was holding back Holy throughout that entire battle. Only after Cloud succeeded in ripping his soul to shreds was he forced to let go and allow it to be summoned to stop Meteor. By the time that happened (and I'm guessing Meteor was pretty close to the Planet by the time of Sephiroth's defeat), Holy really didn't have all that much time to do its thing. You try bracing yourself for the impact of a city-sized meteor in less than one minute. Don't blame Holy, the poor thing tried its best.

heres what i think.

i think that you guys are looking WAY to far into this. You seem to overelook that it is just a game. Fair enough it is the best game ever made but nevertheless still a game.

personally in my opinion the reason for aeris' death is that she if the one that stops meteor in the end. she is in the lifestream and stops meteor. to be in the lifestream she must die.

On the contrary, Barney, overanalyzing an RPG can be quite enjoyable, given a group of intelligent people to converse with. Besides, plotholes are pretty damn annoying. Sometimes it can help to establish a solid explanation for them so that they don't bother you the next time you play through the game. It happens to the best of us. You're playing through Final Fantasy VIII and suddenly you stop and think "Wait...just what the hell IS Time Compression, anyway?" or you're about to watch the end cutscene of FFVII and wonder "So Holy wanted us dead?!" Then you continue to wrack your brain over the subject for the next couple of days until you finally decide to move on to another RPG.

Anyway, that's pretty much the conclusion that I've come to. Aerith was probably controling the Lifestream that ended up destroying Holy.