austraLasia #2321

Churches everywhere you look!

SALELOLOGA (Samoa): 6th January 2009 -- Take careful note of the source location for this news item, because Salelologa, on the Samoan big island of Savai'i is just one of those places in the world which 99.99% of the world, including cyberspace, knows little about. We are fortunate that the new Salesian parish priest of the island's 'capital', Fr Nick Castelijns, is taking a short break in Australia and was able to file this story.  Nick is the 'new' parish priest not because there was an old one.  The Salesians have only recently been assigned this area with a view to creating an entirely new educational and evangelising presence of a Salesian kind on this big island. But Samoa being Samoa, the church comes first.  A school is on the drawing-board too.
    Churches are everywhere in Samoa.  As Nick points out, apart from the 'one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church' there are, along a 6km coastal strip running from the wharf connecting this island via ferry with Upolu, or the 'main' island in commercial and population terms, five Methodist, one Congregational, one Seventh Day Adventist, one Baptist, one Pentecostal and one Mormon church. That's one every half a kilometre or so!
    Despite the economic crisis which has hit Samoan families hard, if Government plans have anything to do with it Salelologa, with 3,000 residents, is in for big things. A new market has been opened, out of town, but the old commercial centre is still there - except that if you really want to buy anything of value, then you need a one and a quarter hour ferry trip followed by another hour's bus ride to Apia. Fr Nick knows that - he makes the trip every week.
    And the new parish church for Salelologa? It's making slow progress; was to be opened in December, is nowhere near finished, and just may be opened in February but probably not.  Much desired by the Archbishop as a kind of 'cathedral' for this island, it is big by local measures - as big if not bigger than all those other ones mentioned earlier, since that's the way it needs to be in Samoa! But of course the real 'church' is the people and its priest, and its catechists.  Most Samoan catechists were trained by the Salesians at the Moamoa Theological College, and have imbibed Salesian values. The catechist is a vital element in the Samoan Church. Fr Nick is spending much of his time in building up the real 'Church', something he does well as a long-time missionary, the longest-serving Salesian msisionary along with Fr James Adayadiel.
    His comments on the Christmas preparation bring a smile - one can see that he has not lost his sense of humour: "We have reconciliation services each night [this was preparation for the Christmas festivities]. Like everywhere else numbers have slumped since the 3rd Rite was banned! One of the local Salesians has come over from Alafua to help from Monday-Wednesday. I have learned a lot of sins in Samoan! Many confessions are 'rote', especially the children's. Sometimes even the 'sequence of sins' with the children is identical, probably depending on their particular Sunday School teacher. Getting caught doing wrong is the biggest sin!"
    Ah well, it puts the long, though very useful days of talk about human rights in Rome into some kind of perspective, I guess.
  _________________
 AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific.  It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome.  For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - just go to Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2008 in the sidebar. You will see the RSS orange icon in your browser address bar - add it from there.  Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at http://sdl.sdb.org

Title: australasia 2321
Subject and key words: EAo Provinces AUL, Samoa
Date (year): 2008
ID: 2000-2099|2321