April 5, 2008
Peruvian missionaries energize
Spanish-speaking in Yolo,
Solano County parishes
Three missionaries from Peru serve as catalyst
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
Father Carlos Farfan receives the offertory gifts during a Mass in Spanish at St. Peter Parish in Dixon, assisted by teen altar servers from the parish community. Luis Gris Elizarraras/Herald photo
At St. Peter Church in Dixon, weekend Spanish-language Masses are so crowded that the parish added a third weekend Mass to accommodate the crowds.
The mid-week Spanish-language Mass fills the church more than half full with parishioners, and that crowd spills over into the Spanish-language youth group meeting after Mass.
On Thursday evenings the well-attended Holy Hour in Spanish includes some time for meditation, vocal prayer and singing, and exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at the altar. In the back of the church, a priest hears individual confessions from parishioners who receive the sacrament of reconciliation.
On one Friday evening during Lent, more than 100 people attended the Stations of the Cross in Spanish. Next to the altar, a screen displayed meditations and prayers in Spanish, along with images of each station. Fourteen different speakers read the meditations aloud and led the prayers. Along the back of the church, out into the vestibule, teenagers and young adults made up a continual line for individual confession.
It’s clear from their participation in these many liturgical activities that Spanish-speaking parishioners are enthusiastic about St. Peter Parish. But it wasn’t always like this.
A few years ago “the church was collapsing,” according to parishioner Antonio Gudino, referring to the Spanish-speaking community that was drifting away from coming to church.
The community has been energized through the ministry of three missionaries from Peru. Fathers Carlos Farfán, Edward Mendoza, and Humberto Palomino are members of Pro Ecclesia Sancta, a Catholic religious order founded in Peru in 1993 by Jesuit Father Pablo Menor.
Bishop William K. Weigand invited members of Pro Ecclesia Sancta to minister in the Sacramento Diocese. The three priests arrived in Dixon in August 2005.
The missionaries divide their service between St. Peter Parish in Dixon, St. Anthony Parish in Winters and its mission church, St. Martin in Esparto, and St. Mary Parish in Vacaville. Each of the parishes have sizeable Spanish-speaking communities. Father Mendoza ministers primarily at St. Mary Parish and Father Palomino focuses on St. Anthony Parish.
Rebirth at St. Peter Parish
The rebirth at St. Peter Parish is due largely to the efforts of Father Farfán.
“Since Father Carlos has come, it’s like we’re waking up,” said parishioner Sara Rosales. “He energizes everybody, even though he’s so peaceful and quiet.”
In an interview, Father Farfán explained that the charism of his order is the evangelization of youth and families to “a real desire for holiness.” Holiness should be a normal, ordinary goal in people’s lives, he said. Such a goal, if part of everyday life, transforms communities.
Following the Rule of St. Ignatius and shaped by Ignatian spirituality, members of Pro Ecclesia Sancta seek to “live and promote the holiness of the church,” Father Farfán said.
Olympia Nunez, secretary to Coadjutor Bishop Jaime Soto, witnessed the religious order’s work firsthand on a recent trip to Peru. “They’re a vibrant community, well known throughout Peru,” she said.
She observed their work among the very poor in Lima, where members of Pro Ecclesia Sancta cleaned, repaired and painted a local church, involving the parishioners in all phases of the work and serving breakfast daily to the poor in “spotless” surroundings. She said she was impressed by the way the religious order cares for people and draws people together.
Pro Ecclesia Sancta’s lay movement, Avanzada Catolica, is a huge movement in Peru, energizing young people in colleges and universities, and even providing religious instruction in the nonsectarian, international American School of Peru, called Franklin Delano Roosevelt School (for grades K-12).
Lay movement spreads to Dixon parish
The lay movement is catching fire in the Dixon parish also.
“The energy in the Hispanic community is amazing,” said John King, a permanent deacon serving St. Peter Parish. But he noted that English-speaking parishioners have been largely unaffected by the three missionaries. The English-speaking community and Spanish-speaking parishioners at St. Peter’s are almost entirely separate, he said. “I wish we could bring that (kind of) evangelization to them (the English speakers),” he said.
Father Chuck Kelly, pastor of St. Peter and St. Anthony parishes, agrees with Deacon King’s assessment. Fluent in Spanish, Father Kelly celebrates bilingual Masses at both parishes, alternating between Spanish and English in the liturgy and delivering homilies in both languages.
Father Kelly noted in an interview that the gap between the English and Spanish-speaking communities is cultural as well as linguistic. Even so, he observed, the first hurdle to clear was the language barrier between pastor and congregation.
Father Farfán and his fellow missionaries had been originally scheduled to settle in Spain when, only a few days before their departure date, they were directed by their community to the United States instead. English was not one of their languages.
“I was very surprised,” Father Farfán recalled. His minimal English proficiency initially confined his ministry to the Spanish–speaking community at St. Peter Parish. He spent several months in intensive English study at UC Davis. In conversation now he is a fluent and nuanced speaker of English, and he is poised to bring his mission to the English-speaking community.
Both Father Farfán and Father Kelly agree that the next hurdle is cultural.
Father Farfan said that one cultural difference is that even non-practicing Catholic Spanish speakers usually maintain cultural practices of piety, such as receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday. In such a person’s life, the practices may have only a secular, cultural meaning, but those practices can be transformed into conversations with God.
Father Kelly noted that in addition to the cultural differences between the congregations themselves, there are cultural differences between the Peruvian and American structures of parish life. The Peruvian model is strong pastorally, he said, but doesn’t leave much time to address management issues and support the existing structures of the American parish.
St. Peter’s devotes the first Friday of each month to an all-day exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, culminating in an evening Spanish-language Mass. Other evenings are booked for lively meetings of altar servers, leadership team formation meetings for youth, or adult ministry sessions. A women’s group meets on Saturdays. A group for married couples is just beginning.
Such a full schedule leaves little room for meeting with parish and finance councils, overseeing a food locker, or perhaps launching a capital campaign, Father Kelly noted. Yet these tasks must also be tackled, he said.
Father Kelly appreciates the Peruvian parish model. He spent seven months living in Mexico as a seminarian, and he observed that, like Peru, Mexico also has a simple parish structure. Communities there have little material wealth, so the parish is a simpler place. The pastor is free to devote almost all of his energy to spiritual pastoral work.
“The challenge is the integration of this Peruvian model with the American diocesan model,” he said.
Parishioner Mayte Gudino, an elementary school teacher fluent in Spanish and English, said she’s glad Father Farfán’s message is beginning to get out to the English-speaking community. “Father Carlos is a wonderful homilist,” she said. “Wait ‘til you hear him.”
“Everyone prays in their own language,” she said, noting that the transformation of the Spanish-speaking community in Dixon is not just the result of Father Farfan’s being a native Spanish speaker. He’s changed the way the community sees things, she said.
“My life has changed,” she said. “My whole family has changed.”
