My Dear Friends of St. John’s & St. Peter’s and Bishop Michael,
It is hard to believe that it has been a week in Brazil already. So much has happened and I have seen so many things that it would take days to explain it all. Last Monday evening Rev. (Portuguese for Fr.) Sergio greeted me at the airport after a long trip. It was such a warm feeling to see a smiling face in a sea of strangers. We went to the Sao Paulo diocesan headquarters where we stayed for the next few days.
Tuesday was spent resting and recovering. There was a meeting of Brazilian Anglicans and Roman Catholics who were discussing issues about Mary. We had lunch together and I discovered that many of them know my seminary professors. I also had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with a soon-to-be-deacon and his wife.
On Wednesday, Bishop Ito treated Sergio and I to lunch at a nearby vegetarian restaurant. (I promised Bishop Ito that I wouldn’t tell Bishop Mike that the lunch cost a whopping $4 for all three of us – so if you see Bishop Mike, please keep this little secret.) The price of food in restaurants here is so cheap – especially when compared to New York City – that it almost seems like stealing.
Later that afternoon, Sergio and I took the subway and visited a museum of religious artifacts from Brazil and Portugal. The artwork is stunning, with bright colors and lots of gold and gold leaf on almost everything. The collection is not as extensive as The Cloisters in New York, but it was still a fantastic experience.
Following the museum we walked through downtown Sao Paulo. I don’t know if I can fully explain the experience, but the vendors were segregated by the merchandise that they were selling. In one block there would be fishing supplies (rods, reels, tackle boxes and other such things), and nothing but fishing supplies. In the next block it was only wedding gowns, the block after that would be hardware stores, and another block was filled with construction equipment. Each block was a distinct product or class of products and when the block ended, so did your selection of that product. As near as I could tell, there was no rhyme nor reason to how the merchants were arranged.
At the end of our walk we came to the tallest building in Sao Paulo. In no time at all we were at the top of this building looking out over the city. This building was about 25 stories tall, and the view was wonderful. Sao Paulo is huge and it goes on for miles and miles. From the top this building, I could not see the end of the city. From one angle it look like the city disappeared into the smog, and from another I could see mountains rising in the distance above the smog. At the top of the building we met a class of young students. For some reason, the big guy with very pale skin and a red beard looked very different and strange to these children. Once they found out that I was an American they all wanted to practice their English with me. All at once I found myself in the middle of about ten children, each trying to start a different conversation at the same time.
After the view from the top, we attended an Evening Prayer service. It was a moving service conducted by monks who used Gregorian Chant to sing the service. While we were in the church the sun was going down, so it gradually became darker as we were in the church singing goodbye to a wonderful day.
Thursday was a very different day. I was treated to a tour of two missions of the Diocese of Sao Paulo. After a bus ride and a brief stop at the cathedral we were off in an old VW van. We viewed a river that runs through the middle of Sao Paulo and is so polluted that the stench can be smelled while driving on a highway more than 50 ft. away. What struck me the hardest during this trip wasn’t the river but the differences between poverty and prosperity and how closely connected they are here. In Lancaster and in New York, we have neighborhoods that are poor and segregated. In many locations by crossing a street you walk into a different class. This is not the case in Sao Paulo. There were many blocks that had a high-rise apartment or office building right next to some old worn-down homes. As I spoke with my friends, it became clear that what I was seeing was normal in Sao Paulo, it wasn’t a case of ‘redevelopment’ in an old area of town.
| Our first stop was in a very poor neighborhood where the church has built a school to serve the poor children who have little hope of a better life without an education. This neighborhood is called Parque Belem. It is a bairro pobre in Portuguese. We toured the building and spent a few minutes with the children, but they were in classes and we didn’t stay long. We were then given a tour of the new construction that was taking place and we talked with the two men who are doing the work. | |
The next stop was to a favela. I have never seen anything like a favela before. These people are the poorest of the poor. Their homes are little more than rotting leftovers from other construction projects. It looked like many of these people were living in little more than cardboard. Many of the homes were in the process of falling over. After the tours, some of my friends explained that in a bairro pobre the people don’t have much but they at least have a home and running water, while in a favela the people lack even these basic necessities. There were many little stinking streams running through the favela that are really the sewers for this community.
In the middle of the favela, there
was the church. The easiest way to
see some of this very important, difficult and heartbreaking ministry would be
to go to http://www.catedral-anglicana.org.br/codigos/en/frameset_en.htm
While I was visiting this place, I
recalled some of my patristic church history lessons and some of the early
saints who where martyred when they were ordered to hand over the church’s
treasures. They brought forth the
poor of the community. I have never
seen poverty and destitution like this before and it is an image that will be
with me for the rest of my life. The
words of our versicles and responses from the Evening Prayer service came to
life:
V.
Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten;
R.
Nor the hope of the poor be taken away.
These are people who desperately
need to be remembered and assisted. My
simple words can not fully describe or articulate the suffering that these
people endure every day of their lives.
 |
The most disturbing part of the
sight was that there were high-rise apartment buildings a short distance away
that could easily be seen by the people in the favela.
Every day these people look at the kind of prosperity that they can never
attain. Every day these people must
leave the favela in order to get food. They
walk among the very prosperous and are overlooked. |
That night Sergio and I took an
eight-hour bus ride to Pereira Barreto. I
must admit that I was concerned when Sergio told me how long the trip would be
and that it was an over-night trip. His
reply was a common saying here in Brazil: “Be happy, no worries.”
The bus was a double-decker that seated about 14 people in recliners that
are very similar to those we have in the United States.
There was seating for six on the bottom level and seating for eight on
the top. It was a wonderful trip,
much nicer than the buses that I am used to.
We left Sao Paulo around 9:15 on Thursday evening and arrived in Pereira
Barreto a little before 6am Friday morning.
Friday was a very busy day.
The parish here runs a pre-school program and Sergio leads the children
in a morning prayer service on Fridays. The
children were excited to see a new visitor and gave me a very warm welcome.
Pereira Barreto is a small city
that sits along a river. The city
was founded in 1928, by Japanese immigrants and the Japanese culture is very
strong in the parish and in the city. About
10 years ago the government put a dam on the river and this forever changed the
small city. The river rose over 30
feet and many of the local farms and homes are now underwater.
Pereira Barreto is now a peninsula that is surrounded by the river and a
major canal. It is now a small
tourist area well known for the fishing and the beach along the river.
Almost every member of the local
Anglican parish is Japanese. They
are a very warm and welcoming people who are quite honored to have friends in
the United States. This parish
supports the pre-school program by charging a small amount that barely covers
the expenses. They also have a
religious education program that they jokingly refer to as their ‘Sunday
School’ class. The class happens
on Saturday morning.
The congregation gathers on Friday
night for Eucharist. They got into
this habit when Sergio was the priest of two congregations.
They liked getting together on Fridays after work and dinner so much that
they decided to keep the service going. This
past Friday there were about 25 people in attendance.
They also have a Sunday Evening Eucharist and about 40 people came to
that service. It is truly a lovely
congregation.
Be at peace my friends; I’ll
send you another note next week.
Patrick