Off to the "Big City"

Giving a blessing to the people at the end of Stations of the Cross on Good Friday

            Many of you already know that at the end of December my beautiful experience working in the small city of Parintins – located on the banks of the Amazon River in the middle of the forest – came to an end.  I was asked by my PIME superiors to move to the city of Manaus to take over a parish on the outskirts of the city from an older PIME priest who was hoping to retire.

            Manaus, a city made famous for the rubber trade during the beginning of the last century.  Manaus, a city which sprang up in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest and has (unfortunately) continued to expand, destroying thousands of acres of virgin rainforest every year in order to make way for “progress”.  Manaus, a city which has grown exponentially over the past 30 years from 250,000 to more than 2 million today.  Manaus, the city to which people flock hoping to find work and prosperity, only to be relegated to the margins of society… poorer than ever.  Manaus, one of the great industrial poles of Brazil, where all raw materials arrive via ship and all finished products leave the ports via ship.  Manaus, my new home.

            Paróquia São Bento (St. Benedict Parish) is located north of the city of Manaus in an area known as Cidade Nova (New City), and consists of houses and businesses that began as a shanty town and squatter’s village 35 years ago and has been “progressing” into buildings of concrete and steel, homes of brick and mortar, and streets lined with shopping centers and small restaurants ever since.

People outside of the mother church as they prepare for a procession for peace on January 1st of this year.

            The actual “mother church” of the parish was built in an area which was surrounded by forest when built on the extreme end of the city; today it is quite far from the end of the city!  There are 130,000 souls in the territory of the parish… so you can imagine that I keep quite busy!!!  The majority of the people live in the areas which are known as “favelas”, or what we would call “slums” in English.

            My parish is made up of a whopping twelve churches (!) each with very large congregations!  In fact, if there were enough priests in the Archdiocese of Manaus, 8 of those 12 churches could be their own parish!!!!  It’s kind of ironic… When I was pastor in Detroit, the only thing I asked for was to please NOT be made pastor of a cluster parish… and here I am pastor of not two or three churches, but of TWELVE!!!!!

            These past few months have been spent meeting with the community council (like parish council) of each church so that I can understand the challenges and gifts of each community, its needs and what it can offer, and how they are striving to build up the unity of our parish community.  I’ve met with all the different pastoral groups within the parish.  I’ve had the opportunity to celebrate mass in each of the churches as least once, and I’ve made a point of being present at as many events as possible.  I’ve begun visiting the religious education children (approximately 700!).  These first three months were spent – more than anything – just observing and attempting to understand the reality.  No big changes, no big decisions… just status quo for now.  Observe, take note, study, try to understand, analyze.

Beginning of Good Friday devotions.

Presentation of the Cross during Good Friday devotions.

Presentation of the cross at Good Friday devotions.

            Now I have begun the “work” stage.  I am trying to follow Pope Francis’ example of “de-centralizing” a lot of the mundane everyday tasks, leaving those decisions to the local community (of course, under the guidance of the pastor) in order to eventually free myself a bit more for pastoral work.

            The pastor before me – a great and holy servant of God to be sure – was not much of an organizer, and consequently everybody basically did whatever they wanted, conflict between competing groups for the same parish resources and spaces was the order of the day, and the parish finances also went “into the red”.  So I have spent a lot of time and energy putting some semblance of order back into the administrative side of the parish.  It has meant a lot of mediating between different groups with opposing ideas, and a lot of explaining to different groups as to WHY they can’t just do whatever they want anymore.

            I’ve also had to put a lot of time and energy into confronting some abuses which were occurring liturgically, such as lay people giving blessings with the monstrance when a priest wasn’t present (!), people celebrating Eucharistic adoration my going up to the altar and hugging the monstrance and cradling it like a child (!!), and some people even opening the tabernacle to give themselves communion (!!!).

            The Archdiocese, upon my entering in as pastor, asked us (well, ordered us, actually!) to implement their centralized and computerized parish accounting system; obviously wanting to obey – and being new so not having any point of reference – I obviously said yes.  It was a bumpy road getting all the 12 churches on board (Brazilians don’t like change very much, especially if it means leaving behind bad habits!), but we’ve done it!  It hasn’t been an extremely smooth transition, and I had to do a lot of coddling and encouraging, but the system is in place and seems to be working well.

            On a more personal note, the house (rectory) and office were in very poor shape.  Poor lighting, cockroaches EVERYWHERE, furniture with bugs coming out of it, a refrigerator held closed with a rope (!), grey institutional-colored walls everywhere, lots of accumulated “junk”, and just a very depressingly sad atmosphere.  PIME gave the parish a $5000 loan so that I could at least paint the walls inside our house and get some decent lighting and furniture.  I used my own money to buy a decent bed (and sheets and pillows), a small tv, a comfortable chair for reading, a dresser, and some items necessary for my office.  Now, finally, the rectory house is CLEAN and feeling like a home.  The same is true of the pastor’s (my!) office.

At the back of the mother church (sacristy entrance) with some of our Missionaries of the Immaculate sisters.

            So, that’s what my life has been like for the past three-and-a-half months.  Most days I am up and around by 7am and finally in bed and asleep close to midnight.  With twelve churches I am often “out of the office” visiting one community or other.  The unfortunate result is that I haven’t been in touch with all of you as much as I would have liked… But now I plan to take every Monday as my “day off” (as do the rest of the priests here in the Archdiocese) and to use that time in order to catch up with everyone… and to try and write at least one blog entry!

            Please PLEASE keep in touch: I really love to hear from all of you!