An interview with the village priest, The Romo

We spent five days in Wangkung, living together with the priest in his house. He belongs to a church called Paroki Santa Maria Dari Fatima, which was founded in 1955 by missionaries. The church currently has 656 members. Often the priests are working in another village then they are born. The bishops decide were the priests are supposed to work.

It takes a long education to become a priest, and you have to take the decision if you want to be a priest or not in an early age. If you want to be a priest you need to take a test after primary school. If you get good enough results, you can start on the seminary, which is the school for priests.

The seminary takes six year, and then eight years at the university in Maumere. It is an expensive education, but still it is not often that rich people become priests. The priest claims that there is no corruption in the Catholic institution. But if you want to be a priest and can’t afford it, the church will help you out if they have the chance.

The priest’s most important job is spiritual guidance. The church is open every Sunday, and some weekdays. But in the week the people are busy working, and there are not a lot of people coming. The genders are equally represented in the church, and men and women share the same tasks. The church does not help people with money, as the missionaries did, instead they give knowledge and teach people how to schedule their future, and plan their economies.

The church helps out when the village wants to open schools. There is one catholic school in the village at the time, and three in the area. The first time they opened a school, they got economic support from Czech missionaries. The economics depend on the village’s economics. The local has to pay collect to the church, but the different churches help each other out, so this church gets money from other churches.

The state does not support the church, and the church is not involved in politics. The church has respect for traditions, but sometimes they mix traditions and religion. They do not have rules against animism, but try to influence people not to practice animism. He means that syncretism is not necessarily a bad thing.

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