The Vicariate

Greetings from the city of Iquitos located in the Amazonian region of Peru. In my February blog (yikes, where has time gone?) I shared my arrival Lima and here in Iquitos where I am working and living.  This is my mission post.  I am working as an administrative assistant in the offices of the Vicariate of San Jose del Amazonas. At present I am learning about what projects we have received donations from, what it takes to monitor a project, and how to compile all the necessary documents to write up a final report for each project. I am also learning how to issue official copies and make corrections to the information found in Baptismal and Wedding certificates.

I am learning more each day about the day-to-day workings of our vicariate.  Our vicariate encompasses an area of the Amazon Jungle region of 155,000 sq. kilometers (59,845.8346 square miles) of land.  It is a very large vicariate with 16 other mission posts on the banks of the Amazon and Napo rivers.  We are a total of 72 missionaries (a bishop, priests, two deacons, brothers, sisters, and lay people) but this is not near enough to meet the needs of the faithful in our vicariate.  

 

I have learned that the needs of our vicariate are many.  We depend solely on the donation of charitable and ecclesiastical organizations to sustain us. In many of the parishes throughout the vicariate Sunday collections average the equivalent of $14.00 per week.  Since our priests are few (14 total), many villages do not have a resident priest but rather have a trained parish agent who conducts worship services focusing on the Sunday readings.  Communion in these worship services are rare and only if a priest happened to celebrate Mass there the week before and was able to leave consecrated hosts.  I learned that consecrated hosts will not last for more than a week due to the high heat and humidity and the lack of facilities to store the hosts.  In the communities where there is no resident priest, the faithful often get to celebrate Mass once or twice a year when a priest visits their community. 

 

Each mission post has anywhere from 30-80 scattered communities in their region, which they visit throughout the year. Most visitations are done by boat, walking, or motorcylces.  These visitations, called “caserias,” are done throughout the year with the hope of getting to visit all the communities in their post at least once a year.  The needs of the native people of Amazonia are many and many look to the church for assistance. Many of the needs have been brought about by the destruction of their land due to deforestation and contamination of the river water they depend on for day-to-day living.

 

My ministry/work has to do, not so much working WITH the native population, but rather working FOR the native population. What I mean is that the job of our office is to make sure that missionaries out at the mission posts have what they need to best serve the folks they minister too.