3. The Parish of Saint Rita’s is born

The Augustinian Recollects came to the Purus in 1925, in the midst of a large expansion at the beginning of the 20^th Century.

Labrea is the most important population of the middle Purus region and the episcopal See of the prelature region which uses its name, and which takes in the parishes of Labrea, Canutama, Pauiní and Tapaua. After establishing themselves in Labrea, they lived permanently in Canutama since 1942. What is today Tapaua was visited by the missionaries from Canutama once a year, within the so called visits of the desobriga.

The word desobriga could be translated as “freedom of obligations”, and makes reference to the Catholics in these regions who had only one opportunity every year to fulfil the commandments of the Church, when a missionary visited the place for a period of less than twenty-four hours. They would celebrate the Eucharist, the weddings of new couples, the baptisms of those born in that year, etc.

The first great plan of evangelization of the territory of Tapaua was implanted by the Augustinian Recollect Isidoro Irigoyen (1915-1985), the Parish Priest of Canutama for twenty-three years. From 1943 onwards he organized the desobrigas in a methodical way and annually in the region, which beforehand was visited in a more partial way from Labrea given the immensity of the territory in the prelature region.

A time came when this situation was no longer acceptable. Tapaua, organized as a new municipality, grew quickly. In 1960, the first official census gave it 8,024 inhabitants and 95% of them lived in the rural area. In the central city the population was 422 people. Another factor required a response from the Catholic Church: the permanent presence of foreign Protestant missionaries with the help of important local traders who financed their stay. The absence of Catholic religious was leaving these populations in the hands of other churches.

This is how the religious describe in their first report written in 1962 the municipality of Tapaua which already had then 10,000 inhabitants:

“Tapaua is now a numerous centre with intense regional activities and a political organization, similar to that of the other municipalities in the Amazon. Unfortunately, our prelature region has not been able to appropriately assist this immense region unless by way of the holy desobrigas, which in reality have been very spaced out in time due to the lack of priests… There is an urgent need for the permanent presence of a missionary”.

Today the Parish of Tapaua includes 234 population centres, taking in that of Santana de Supiã (Berurí) in the north, until Caratiá, on the limits of Canutama. The smaller and more isolated populations are on the lakes and tributaries of the Purus, some of which are very difficult to access when the waters are low. The forty largest, generally situated in the Purus and accessible all year round, have a Catholic grass roots community, a first level Primary school and an electrical generator for some hours of the day. Only in the municipal headquarters is there a second level Primary and a Secondary school, a hospital and permanent electricity; but this is often subject to frequent power cuts due to a lack of fuel or equipment failures.

A. An area of strong Protestant implantation

The headquarters of the new municipality was built in a community where a foreign Protestant pastor permanently carried out his mission, supported by local traders. Nonetheless, before this there had been missionary activity by Evangelicals in the territory of Tapaua.

In 1950 the first community of the church God’s Assembly was born in Lake Panelão. It was the third community of God’s Assembly created in the Amazon State: the first was also born in the Purus, in Labrea. Ismael Santana, the pastor who founded the Church from Panelão, travelled by canoe from the communities of Beabá until Abufarí; even today many of these rural communities are almost always evangelicals.

One of the first foreign missionaries was Jack David Collyns Walkey. A British Engineer, he arrived at Boca de Ipixuna at the hand of Milton Rosas, a tradesman who also made attempts to take hold of political power; but he never received support at the ballots. At the beginning, Walkey oversaw the services in one of the floating houses anchored in the Ipixuna. In 1960 he constructed a two floor house, with a room in the lower part of the house for the use of services, and on the upper floor his home. The number of believers grew and he started to build a Congregational Church. Also, thanks to him, they later built the Church of Peace.

The “pastor Jaques”, as he was known in Tapaua, worked in various ways to help the recently created municipality; to him they owe the measurement and marking off of the area of the municipality in 1959, and in 1977 the establishment of the first aquatic runway for seaplanes in the Purus. In 1985 he moved to the South of the country, having first received the title of Honorary Citizen of Tapaua. He continued to preach in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, where he built the Baptist Church of Grace in Jardim Morumbi and collaborated with the Publisher Fiel. He kept up to date a blog, until his death in April 2012.

Along with this, Wilbur Pickering and his wife, members of an inter-ecclesial Protestant group, lived with the Apurinã Indians IN the village next to the municipal headquarters. His project looked to translate the Bible into all the indigenous languages. Pickering tells his story in an interview published on the Internet  (from minute 3:20); he stayed in Tapaua until 1972.

In 1963, a married couple started to live with the Jamamadi on the Piranhas River and maintained contact with the Juma. Since 1965 there was a Protestant presence in high Cunhuã, in a maloca (or large hut) in the town of Deni. Also Judy King from the United States and Catherine Baerdour from Scotland settled near to the Apurinã village of Tauamirim in 1975; and there were other cases in the town of Paumari.

God’s Assembly came to the municipal headquarters in 1968, when the Catholic Church had already established a community of Religious there five years beforehand. In a private residence the Assembly had their first local meeting, and today it has the biggest number of followers among non-Catholics. On the 30^th of March 1970 they started the construction of their first church under the direction of the pastor José Gomes da Silva. They later expanded district by district.

The Evangelical Churches continue to grow; there is a lot of variety and diversity, with Churches for all tastes, necessities and people; an unstoppable growth trend. There is a continuous interchange of followers from one to another according to the immediate needs which people feel: health, success, happiness… It is one of their characteristics, the lure to the emotions and various needs of people.

They offer very emotive cults, with little or no reasoning behind them, and they are often led by attractive and charismatic people, not always well informed. They rely on mass media communication throughout the country and promise without any discomfort salvation, riches, healing, perfect relationships… They have great economic resources, some of which are organized as true businesses without paying any taxes because of protective legislation.

When they can they build big churches, full of commodities and attractive visuals and sound, as if they were shopping centres or theatres; they tend not to take on charitable projects nor do they take part in social movements. But they do enter political parties and elections with their own candidates in order to take control of governments, both structurally and economically.

At the moment in the urban areas of Tapaua there are fifteen chapels and thirty-three churches; the Catholic Church has six Churches. Amongst the Evangelicals there is God’s Assembly (eleven churches), The Traditional Assembly of God (3), The Church of the Seventh Day Adventists (3), The Evangelical Church of the Full Korean Mission (3), God’s Assembly of Madureira (2), and one temple for each one the Assembly of God’s Ministry of Belem, God’s Assembly of the Christian Congregation of Brazil, The Baptist Church of the Convention, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Church of God is love, Presbyterian Church, Tabernacle of Faith, Church of United Pentecostals of Brazil, Church of Peace, Church of the Strong God, and the newest, the Church of the Prophetic Generation (30/01/2014).

Amongst the Pentecostals there are big differences, and they tend to proclaim arrogantly the exclusivity of salvation; but they unite in the criticism and condemnation of the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, they are now second generation Evangelicals without responsibilities and we can speak of “non-practising Evangelicals”. There are no Churches or people who are recognized as Non-Christians, although not all of the Neo-Pentecostal are strictly Christians according to the common agreements of the CONIC (National Council of Christian Churches), in which Catholics, Reformed Churches, Lutherans, Orthodox and Presbyterians take part.

According to the statistics of the Annual Catholic Report of the Holy See, in the prelature of Labrea Catholics represented 85% of the population in 1949; in 2013 they were 78.5%, with a rise of half a point in comparison with 2004 (78.0 %).

B. Catholics without Priests

One of the principal problems of the Catholic Church in the prelature of Labrea has been the frequent lack of Priests and Religious with a lasting presence in the communities. Not even the personal legislation of the Order of the Augustinian Recollects, which expressly talks of at least three Religious in every community, has been fulfilled.

In Tapaua this has been of particular importance, for the change in the members of communities has been continuous. In these fifty-two years of presence in Tapaua there have passed through a total of thirty-nine Religious with an average stay of thirty months, or two and a half years. Forty-six per cent (18) have been there for less than two years. Enough to learn the language, get used to the climate, get to know the people and have a more intense and organized pastoral activity.

Since the Second Vatican Council, when they gave lay people a real opportunity for an integral service and a responsibility in the configuration and the liturgical celebration in the Church, there has been a lack of sufficiently trained lay people to direct grass root communities, especially in rural zones. When they have been trained, and more so if they were young people, many of them understood that there was little future there and they have emigrated looking for better opportunities.

C. Popular religious expression

Outside of the desobrigas, until the beginning of the 1980’s the spiritual life of these Catholics was reduced to feasts for patron saints and the life of faith within the family. In almost all of these homes, especially rural ones and in communities without chapels, there were small altars with images of Catholic Saints, which the Religious would bless during their visits. Families prayed novenas and litanies and elders led the prayers.

This experience had deep roots in the popular religious expression of North-east Brazil, a place where many families came from. One of the most usual practices were promises, something similar to a spiritual kind of bartering: a person would ask something of a saint and would promise, that if it came true, that would do this or that kind of action. The most common promises were made at the time of giving birth, and the “payment” was to give the child the name of the saintly patron. But there were other promises like reaching a place of pilgrimage in the main parish on one’s knees, donations and alms, special prayers, visiting a particular priest to pray together…

NEXT PAGE: 4. The Augustinian Recollects become citizens of Tapaua

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