Religion

Through the history, 28 priests have come to Nggela village to do their practice. In the last couple of years the members of the church has been absent. The number of traditions has also been diminishing. Since the number of traditions has been reduced, the practice of religion has taken over to a larger extent.

The Catholic priests, Romo, on Flores have a long way to go before they are assigned to a parish. The road towards priesthood begins at 12, when they start attending a Catholic junior high school, and then go on to a special high school. Then ten years at university waits, before they are assigned to parishes as apprentices. The responsibility for assigning priests to the different parishes lies with the bishop.

According to himself, he has three major duties. One is to be a priest, to perform the different ceremonies and duties given to him by the Church. This includes baptisms, weddings, mass, communion etc. During a normal week, the Romo in Nggela has to perform mass in his main church at 5.30 every morning. Every Sunday he visits four different villages in his parish to perform the Sunday Mass, in addition to performing Mass three times a week in other villages.

Secondly, the Romo is supposed to work as the 13th disciple of Jesus in his parish and spread the word of Christ to as many as possible.

The third main duty is acting as a king, taking responsibility and making decisions for the Christians in the parish. This is why the people respect him and look to him as they would a king.

On the issue of adat and the relationship between the Church and the traditional leaders, we got the impression that both sides had a lot of respect for each other. It is important for the Romo to make people believe in Christianity, but rather than telling them the old ways are wrong, he focuses on showing them what is good about Catholicism. The church cooperates with the adat leaders on community issues, but when it comes to medical issues, the Romo tries to encourage people to go to modern hospitals rather than the shaman. The only real conflicts are on a personal level, when people find it hard to combine the different beliefs. People go to confessions two times a year, and if asked, the Romo has a responsibility as their king and a man of God to tell them to follow the ways of the Catholic Church.

The Church in this area has different ways to help the development of the area. They have an organization called PSE that helps people with practical issues, like tree planting and financial support to the families of the recently deceased. The most important thing though is motivating the people, making them believe in themselves and offer inspiration from the pulpit. Because the Church is run mostly on donations, they don't contribute any money to the community, that's the responsibility of the government.