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EASTER ISLAND Feb-11-2005 (960 words) With photos. xxxi
On remote Pacific island, priest ministers to a transient flock
By Barbara J. Fraser
Catholic News Service
HANGA ROA, Easter Island (CNS) -- On Sunday morning, the small church on this remote South Pacific island is packed for Mass. A choir backed by drums and an accordion sings in Rapa Nui, the local language, while Father Joe Navarrete celebrates the liturgy in three languages: Rapa Nui for the native islanders, Spanish for the transplants from the Chilean mainland, and English for the tourists.
"This is a very missionary parish," he said. "I come from another culture, so I have to be a missionary, acculturate myself and learn to understand the culture. Being a missionary to foreigners has also been new for me."
Easter Island is best known for its imposing "moai," the huge carved stone statues that were the center of ancestor worship in the ancient Rapa Nui culture. The forebears of today's islanders arrived from other parts of Polynesia about 1,500 years ago, and the population grew until it stretched the island's fragile natural resources to the breaking point.
Researchers believe that deforestation and depletion of fish and other resources triggered the collapse of the culture, finished off by raids by slave traders, who took most of the remaining islanders to Peru. When some finally returned, they brought with them diseases to which the island's few remaining inhabitants had no resistance.
By the 19th century, just more than 100 Rapa Nui remained on the island, more than 2,500 miles west of the coast of Chile.
Since the 1990s, however, Easter Island has been on an upswing. The population is now nearly 4,000. About 2,200 are Rapa Nui, while the others have moved to the island from "the continent," as local residents call Chile, of which Easter Island is a province, or from other countries.
But the influx of outsiders has placed new pressures on the culture, exacerbated by the influx of tourists, now about 18,000 a year, who are drawn by the island's mysterious past and exotic scenery.
Many of them attend Sunday Mass -- some tour books recommend that even non-Catholics take the time to hear the choir -- and become part of Father Navarrete's transient flock.
Although small and far from other land, "the island has opened up new horizons for me," the priest says. Many tourists seek him out after Mass or during the week for counseling, and he often receives letters from travelers telling him how much of an impact their contact with the parish made on them.
He worries, however, that the number of outsiders moving to the island, combined with the large flow of tourists, will overwhelm what remains of the culture, which was already fragile when the first Catholic missionary arrived in 1864.
"It's going to be lost soon," he says. "Many children no longer speak the language."
The church's role on the island has evolved over the centuries. The first missionary was French Brother Eugenio Eyraud of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary; he arrived in 1864 and died in 1868.
The missionary who most shaped island life, however, was Father Sebastian Englert, a German Capuchin who arrived in 1935 and died in 1969 in the United States, where he was giving talks to raise funds for conservation of the island's archeological sites and cultural heritage.
As Mass ends, Father Navarrete leads the congregation in a prayer composed by Father Englert. With eerie prescience, the decades-old prayer invokes protection against outside influences that threaten to erode the local culture and traditional ways of life.
Although he originally traveled to the island to do archeological work for the University of Chile, Father Englert also took on the role of pastor, becoming extremely protective of the local people against outside forces that he feared would overwhelm them.
He called on his parishioners not to marry foreigners or people from the Chilean mainland and not to leave the island. At one point, he embraced the establishment of a colony for Hansen's disease patients because it would isolate the island even more.
Some called Father Englert "the king without a crown."
"Some people saw him as a dictator who prohibited things, but his intention was to conserve the culture," Father Navarrete says.
Those fears were not entirely unfounded. While it has brought prosperity, tourism has been accompanied by increases in alcoholism, domestic violence and sexually transmitted diseases. Navarrete worries about islanders who marry foreigners and leave, only to return later when the relationships break down.
He is also concerned about young people, who must move to the Chilean mainland for college. Because of shortcomings at the local public school, some families send their high-school-age children to the mainland so they will be better prepared for college.
In a culture that values the extended family, that early separation is difficult, and the trend has caused a jump in pregnancies among unmarried adolescents, he says.
The parish is addressing those problems by focusing on education, building a parish school that will impart values and provide a solid high school education so students will not have to leave the island until they are ready for college.
Construction has begun, but the project faces an uphill battle because Chile, while poor by U.S. standards, is better off than most other Latin American countries, making it difficult to interest international agencies in funding the school.
Father Navarrete has appealed to individuals, families or parishes around the world to sponsor a classroom at a cost of about $14,000. He hopes the first of the 480 students will begin classes in 2006.
"The biggest challenge for the parish in the future will be having an influence on families through the school," he says.
END
Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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