A New Vision of Church

The story of Scarboro’s mission to Brazil

By Michael O'Kane
January 1999

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In this article, we present an historical glimpse of the beginnings of Scarboro’s mission in the Amazon. The writer, Michael O’Kane, was a member of the first team of Scarboro missionaries sent to Brazil in 1961. This account is excerpted from his manuscript, in which he recalls these early years.

The summer of 1961 was preparation time for me and my four colleagues, and Brazil lay at hand. Pope John XXIII had announced the Ecumenical Council and as young missionaries we all looked forward to this heralded event with eagerness. Pope John also made a world-wide plea to the Churches of North America and Europe, asking that resources and personnel be channeled to the Latin American Church in Central and South America.

To be involved in this modern crusade and mission was both a privilege and a challenge.

My knowledge of Brazil was minimal. Every Canadian had heard of Rio de Janeiro and the beaches of Copacabana; the Amazon River was one of the largest rivers in the world, and the jungle along its banks was a source of oxygen for the world. Beyond these facts and perhaps a few other generalities, the country, its history, its peoples, its government, were complete unknowns.

As far as any deep under-standing of the area to which we were going, or of the country itself, my four colleagues knew about as little as I did. Certainly with our appointments to Brazil, we availed ourselves of any spare time to study anything and everything we could get our hands on. And study we did, but we, nevertheless, set out as neophytes to a land of mystery and enchantment; the locale—Itacoatiara, situated in the heart of the Amazon basin, the jungle and the mighty river. All this was the stuff of adventure and I was to be part of this thrilling expedition!

Itacoatiara

At that time, Itacoatiara was a small town with a population of around 11,000 inhabitants, and its history went back several hundred years. It was, and continues to be, the seat of a municipal area that extends close to 100 miles upriver and about 70 miles downriver. Situated on the northern banks of the Amazon, it is approximately 180 miles east of the Amazonian capital of Manaus. It is a port city as the river is the principal communication route that links the innumerable villages and communities east and west of the town.

The town is the centre for all trade and commerce for both the municipality of Itacoatiara and the four neighbouring municipalities of Itapiranga, Silves, Urucara, and Urucurituba, including the far-flung and isolated communities and villages throughout (what is known as “the interior”). The total area spans 92,000 square kilometres.

At the time of our arrival, the entire region looked to Itacoatiara for whatever health and medical resources were available, and for secondary education. The judicial system, and small detachments of the navy and airforce were all there. The church, too, had a very visible and active presence in the life of the town, with the matriz, or mother church, at the north end of the main praca or city park.

Depending on the season there was a constant flow of farmers and traders, and local fishermen were active in the early hours of the morning and late afternoon. The river supplied an abundance and variety of fish for the town.

Itacoatiara, an Indigenous name meaning ‘painted rock’ is situated about two degrees below the equator. There are two seasons, the rainy and dry; the former extending from December until June, and the latter the ensuing months. The temperature drops in the rainy season to around 70 degrees fahrenheit, and during the dry season it hovers close to the 100-degree mark, rising to around 110-115 degrees in a very hot season. During the month of June there is always a breeze that carries cooler air down from the Andes, and we usually referred to this period as our winter when the temperature would drop to 65 degrees.

Obviously the river dominates the lives of the people. It is their main supply and communication route, and food source. In a normal year it rises and falls between 40 to 60 feet, inundating huge areas of the adjacent jungle and linking interior villages with inland lakes, through a series of small rivers and streams. The river is about a mile and a half wide in front of the town and its current is strong.

An Historic Event

Our arrival was an historic event in the long history of Itacoatiara. There had always been ties with Portugal, but now five Canadians, Anglo-Saxons, were taking up residence.

Hundreds of townsfolk lined the shores and stood on the docks as lines were thrown out and our boat was safely secured. Hymns were sung as we were officially welcomed by the two resident clergy and many local officials. Crowds jostled to greet us and a procession led us from the docks up the small hill to the principal park situated in front of the church. An eloquent spokesman for the church and the town, Mr. Sebastian Vasconcellos Dias, welcomed us with a masterpiece of oratory. Mr. Dias, a fervent Catholic, was manager of the Bank of Brazil and a leader in the town's economic and social life.

Brazilians welcome the stranger with an openness and warmth that is natural, and as our first weeks and months quickly went by, we established a good rapport and made friends, not just with the parish folk, but with the townspeople as a whole. We became accepted not just for what we were, but for who we were as persons.

As we became more and more involved in the pastoral life of the town, two major problems surfaced. The first was that access to education was not possible for a large percentage of the poor. We held talks with the Education Department for the State, and a contract was finally agreed upon whereby the Church would provide and maintain classroom facilities, organize and supply supervisory staff, and the State would pay the teachers' salaries. The Precious Blood Sisters from Manaus were willing to run the school and establish a convent in Itacoatiara.

The second major problem was the lack of health facilities. There was a clinic administered by the State Health Organization, with trained personnel, including one doctor, who tended to the health needs of the five municipalities with over 100,000 people. There was no hospital in the area. At the time Hansen's disease (leprosy), malaria, tuberculosis, and pneumonia were the prevalent maladies, and the clinic lacked adequate trained personnel and medicines.

This lack of available health facilities for the majority of the population was all too evident. The Scarboro Society in Canada put out feelers, and the Peterborough Sisters of St. Joseph generously agreed to finance and send a team of professional medical Sisters to operate and staff a small hospital which was opened by late 1965.

Shadows of a Pastoral

Certainly our adaptation, our inculturation and becoming fluent in the language were the major preoccupations of our small group in the beginning. Then came involvement in the parish structures and pastoral as we had found them. As we moved into the economic and social lives of the people, the whole question of development and what integral development was all about, became central in our meetings as a group.

Our mission activity in Itacoatiara depended on financial aid from abroad. Certainly the hospital and the health care work depended on outside help, and the new school system was financed in large part by Scarboro’s budget for the Brazil mission. Did we build up structures that depended on aid from outside? Christian charity was taken for granted, but sustainable development programs were something else.

The necessity of formulating a plan and policy for our work was a major concern for most of us.

Our meetings as a Scarboro group were major events. In attempting to prioritize a list of programs that would be funded from abroad, it became evident that our theological views, and our vision of Church and of development were at variance. However, through persistence, we hammered out a long-range plan that would bode well for the pastoral and social work of the Church in Itacoatiara.

Along with the fact that Vatican Council II was taking place in Rome, two events would greatly affect our lives and our work.

In March of 1964 the government of then-President Joao Goulart was overthrown by a military coup. At first the Church in Brazil favored the revolution. The coup was saving the country from communism. But the security of the State became the new god, and the country and her citizens became enmeshed in a police state and lost all semblance of democracy. The Church soon spoke out against the military and decried its violations of human rights. Church organizations became suspect and many were shut down by the military. Lay leaders, priests, and religious became prime targets of suspicion, and their work, activities, sermons, and movement came under scrutiny by the military. Many foreign missionaries were expelled from the country while the local clergy who spoke out against the military were subjected to harassment, arrest, and in some cases to detention without trial, and torture.

The military dictatorship immersed us, as no other teacher could, into the political realities of Brazil, Latin America, and the world.

Voice of the Voiceless

In the following years, the Brazilian Church and her leaders was to become the voice of the voiceless. She was the one institution that could openly defy the State. And as the conscience of the nation that spoke out against a totalitarian regime, she quickly became the prime enemy of the State.

The second event of momentous importance was the historic meeting of the Latin American bishops at Medellin, Colombia, in 1968. The meeting produced a series of radical documents that analyzed the political and social situation of the Latin American peoples. At Medellin, Church leaders focused on the plight and the sub-human living conditions and poverty of the majority of peoples on the sub-continent. The poor were poor, not because they wanted to be poor, but because of structures that were imposed upon them. Unjust economic systems condemned these millions to lives of ignorance, disease and poverty.

Medellin, in a very profound sense, challenged the Latin American Church to see the scarred and disfigured person of Christ in these masses of suffering humanity crying out, not for charity, but for justice.

This call and challenge of Medellin would bring the Latin American Church to her finest hour in centuries. From a Church of privilege, and traditionally linked to those in power, it would become a Church maligned, a Church persecuted! And as bishops, priests, religious, and laity took up the call of Medellin, they too would be smeared as subversives, as communists! Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador is perhaps the most public of the martyrs of Latin America. But from Mexico to the southernmost tip of Chile and Argentina, hundreds of martyrs, lay leaders, religious, priests, and bishops have shed their blood and continue to give their lives for the cause of justice.

Daily Life

As events unfolded in the outside world, and within the country itself, life and work went on in our hinterland. The pattern of our daily lives and work fell into two categories: work in the town of Itacoatiara itself; and our trips to the ‘interior’—to the surrounding towns and villages situated within this 92,000 square kilometre region of the Amazon.

People who live in the interior are called “caboclos.” They are truly pioneers, etching out a life for themselves and their families with hard work, often under very difficult conditions. They are subsistence farmers, working a small plot of land for crops, and fishing and hunting for their food. Whatever supplies they need, they buy at the ‘country’ store in the nearest town.

A typical small farm would have a few chickens and ducks, three or four pigs, and sheep. The farm would consist of five to ten acres, hacked out of the jungle surroundings. Farming is rudimentary, and the cleared area is always adjacent to the water.

Most people would own their land by right of tenure or through outright purchase. Tenure meant that they had lived and worked on the parcel of land for at least seven years. But very few possessed the actual deed to the land. The deplorable registration system in practice at the local Land Title and Registration Office, with bribery and corruption quite prevalent, ended very often in tragedy for many people. When certain others would want the land, tax receipts which were proof of payment, legal documents, and even deeds of possession, would disappear from files.

Formation of the Laity

In 1967, the first training session for pastoral leaders was held in Itacoatiara. The session was part of the program of the newly-formed CENTREPI—not a species of centipede, but an acronym for the pastoral and training centre of the prelacy of Itacoatiara. (A prelacy is really a diocese in formation.)

CENTREPI was founded to train and form laity for pastoral work which had always been the exclusive domain of priests and Sisters. Through the years it has trained and educated close to 3,000 men, women, and youth for work in the prelacy.

In its initial years, community leaders from the interior towns and villages, and the city proper, were chosen by the priests as candidates for leadership. But as time went on, the communities themselves chose future leaders for pastoral and community work in their own communities.

The first courses were basic: education, hygiene and health, community leadership, and catechetics. As training and education became more of a priority, teachers with specializations were brought in from the south. The special training sessions would be attended by the Sisters, priests, and pastoral agents from all over the prelacy.

The centre opened whole new dimensions in the life of the Church in the prelacy. Deep bonds of commitment were forged among the participants.

As clerics and foreigners we had our vision of Church, but gradually, through the input of the people, our vision became more integrated to their needs and aspirations. We developed a greater understanding of them and their communities. We were dealing with people from the grassroots, the reality of their lives and the problems they faced every day. This new vision saw the Church as the People of God, and the many small and separate communities as members of a greater faith community.

I always remember with deep feelings Geraldino de Freitas, a man in his 60s who came from one of our poorest and most backward communities. The village was called Terra Preta de Limao, (black land of the limes). In high water one had to travel by canoe for several hours through dense swampland; and in the dry season it was a long trek on foot, out to one of the side rivers that fed into the Amazon.

Geraldino, scarcely literate, followed courses at CENTREPI, giving of his time and energy with a dedication that was unflagging. Several times a year, over a period of five or six years, he immersed himself in study, learning to read and write. He studied the biblical and catechetical courses, intent on becoming a proficient leader for the well-being of his community. And each year he would bring two or three of the youth for training.

His determination and desire for learning was an example for all of us. And it goes without saying that the village of Terra Preta de Limao had a deeply committed team of pastoral leaders.

Another major happening that helped to integrate and mould this new vision was a sister-church relationship that was initiated in 1971. The Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, under Cardinal Evaristo Arns, began a program of mutual exchange with the Prelacy of Itacoatiara. The objective of the program was to expose the respective Churches and their people to each other's life and reality.

For a period of ten years teams of laity, religious, and priests came as volunteers to work in the prelacy. Their commitment and that of Cardinal Arns helped us as local Church to become very much an active partner of the Brazilian Church as a whole.

The Sao Paulo teams of lay and religious were committed to the vision of a new Church. Their involvement with the Church in Itacoatiara helped us to grow and mature as a young Church, but one that was linked with the aims and objectives—the pastoral plan—of the greater Brazilian Church.

George Marskell, together with his Scarboro colleagues and the pastoral team from Sao Paulo, set up a pastoral plan for the Prelacy of Itacoatiara in 1974. In 1978 he was ordained bishop of the prelacy which was divided into seven pastoral zones. Each of these zones had a pastoral team made up of laity, religious, and one priest. At that time, there were approximately 140 Basic Christian Communities scattered throughout the prelacy, each with their own pastoral leaders elected by the community.

With a pastoral plan for the prelacy and pastoral teams for the seven areas, there were also other teams of laity and religious set up for the following responsibilities: children’s catechesis, youth programs, the care and visitation of the sick, marriage preparation, baptismal preparation, a workers’ pastoral, and the pastoral for work among the Indigenous peoples.

The Sisters also ran a health program and a dispensary for medicines, and there was also a team in charge of the training centre (Centrepi). At the grassroots level, every community had an elected leader, one or two catechists, and a Eucharistic Minister. All were volunteers.

It is only fitting that these local community leaders be acknowledged for what they were to the overall running of the pastoral program for the prelacy. The communities depended on these local leaders. These were the men and women who lived and worked side by side with the rest of the community, who struggled with them for a daily living, and who gave of their time and talents to build real faith communities. Without their sacrifices, and commitment to their faith and their communities, no lasting work could have been accomplished.

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