by Marion Amberg

When the pastor of St. Patrick Church in Vanderwagen, N.M., and Good Shepherd Mission at Pinehaven on the Eastern Navajo Agency counts his blessings, he includes the Mission Partners of Catholic Extension and the monthly salary subsidy they provide.

 

“One week the collection at Good Shepherd was 11 cents,” says Father Walter Opalewski, a native of Chicago. And for one three-month period, the offerings at both of these small rural congregations about 30 miles south of Gallup, N.M., totaled $26 — not even enough to fill the gas tank of the priest’s 12-year-old car.

“The subsidy gifts help me to buy food and sundry medications,” says the grateful 63-year-old priest, who now lives in a small but clean refurbished trailer near St. Patrick Church instead of the rodent-infested trailer he first called home.

 

Father Opalewski is one of 63 missioners in the Gallup Diocese who each receive a $300 monthly subsidy made possible by Mission Partner donations. 

 

The subsidy works out to about $75 a week for 33 sisters, 10 priests, three deacons and 17 laypersons living a hand-to-mouth existence in the vast Diocese of Gallup, more than half of which is reservation land for the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Ute and Pueblo tribes.

 

 

 

 

“Some parishes in the neighboring Diocese of Phoenix have a greater annual collection than all of the parishes in the Diocese of Gallup combined,” explains diocesan finance director Jim Hoy about the quarter-million dollars that the Gallup Diocese receives in annual salary subsidies. 

“At some of our parishes, the Sunday collections are $20,” notes Hoy.

 

Nationwide, Mission Partners support more than 400 men and women serving the neediest and remotest areas of America. These partners in spreading the Faith may be invisible in the mission fields, but their generosity is making an eternal difference. “For we are partners working together for God, and you are God’s field,” the Gallup Diocese’s vision statement quotes 1 Corinthians 3:9.

 

If Mission Partners could step into Father Opa­lewski’s shoes, they would find his work is hardly easy. Here in New Mexico’s “checkerboard area” — named for how the land was divided between the Native Americans and non-Natives — Father ministers mainly to the Navajo. Many of the Diné, as the Navajo call themselves, do not speak, read or write English fluently.

 

“You just do your best to bring them the message of Christ’s love and mercy for all people,” says Father Opalewski about the language barrier. The Holy Spirit, however, speaks one tongue, and Father’s ministry — aided by four sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation founded by Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta — is bearing fruit.

 

“One by one, we’re welcoming the sheep back,” says Father Opalewski, who arrived here in 2006, about the growing number of lapsed Catholics returning to the fold.

 

On the eastern edge of the Gallup Diocese, Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Seboyeta, N.M., may be at the tail end of a lonely highway off I-40 between Gallup and Albuquerque, but Sister Ellen Corcoran, SCSJA, isn’t about to let this centuries-old parish die — physically or spiritually.

 

As pastoral administrator, Sister Ellen serves as catechist, liturgy coordinator, secretary, building- and-grounds inspector, parish record keeper, friend, counselor, presider at funeral services (when no priest is available) and fund-raiser for the 1820 adobe church that’s in desperate need of repair.

 

The church’s foundation has shifted, causing one wall to separate from the ceiling of the sacristy, says Sister Ellen, 55. To alleviate the mold and water damage this has caused, the mission also is seeking Catholic Extension’s help with the $9,500 repair bill.

 

And that’s just the beginning of Sister Ellen’s duties. The Milwaukee native is also pastoral administrator for Our Lady of Light Church in Cubero and St. Joseph Mission in San Fidel. All three missions are run on a shoestring budget.

 

“We do not have a priest assigned to us,” explains Sister Ellen, “and because we don’t have a regular Mass schedule, we don’t have a regular collection.”

 

When a priest from another parish can come to say Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows or Our Lady of Light, which have about 50 families each, the offering might total $50 to $100, says Sister Ellen. Many pa­rishioners — descendants of Spanish settlers who arrived here in 1800 — are retired or receiving disability after working in the uranium mines.

 

“My religious community made financial sacrifices for me to come here,” says Sister Ellen, a Sister of Charity of St. Joan Anti­da, a congregation that began in France and takes a fourth vow of service to the poor in addition to chastity, obedience and poverty. “The $300 monthly subsidy is a tremendous gift.”

 

Sister Ellen’s stipend, however, is doubly important. It also helps support Sister Mary Kainz, another St. Joan Antida follower, who ministers to the many sick and homebound. Before Sister Mary’s arrival last year, says Sister Ellen, some homebound in this very rural area were feeling isolated and even abandoned by the Church. The missions had been without an active pastoral minister for several years.

 

“They are so grateful to have someone come pray with them or bring them Communion,” says Sister Ellen. “We also keep in phone contact with them.”

 

As frugal as these two sisters are, they live by faith and pray for their daily needs — even money for the next delivery of diesel oil to heat their residence, which dates back to 1920.

 

“It gives us a great sense of hope knowing people care about our situation,” says Sister Ellen, “and who support us not only financially but with prayers as well.”

On the Arizona side of the Gallup Diocese, Franciscan Father Eddie Fronske believes in living large for God. His parish covers about 1.2 million acres — almost the entire White Mountain Apache Reservation in east-central Arizona.

 

However, living large for God also means engaging in spiritual warfare for the reservation, which has pockets of unemployment as high as 90 percent and crime and suicide rates nine times the national average.

 

“When other ministers ask how I can stay here with all the violence, I tell them that I take two hours and 20 minutes each day for prayer,” says Father Fronske, 66, who has received death threats since he arrived at St. Francis of Assisi Apache Church 25 years ago. “I may not have the time, but that’s what I need to do.”

 

Unlike many Southwest missions dating back to the 1600s, the Franciscan presence on this reservation is relatively recent. Lutheran missionaries came here in the late 1800s and the Fran­ciscans were invited in 1920. Today Father Fronske is pastor to 220 families — about 15 percent of the reservation’s population of 15,000.

 

Just as Jesus didn’t abandon the one lost sheep, the mountain friar won’t abandon his scattered flock. Several years ago, he took on the added responsibility of pastor for St. Anthony Mission at Cedar Creek and St. Catherine Church in Cibecue when the priest there be­came ill and had to leave. Father Fronske logs hundreds of miles weekly driving to these missions to offer Mass, administer the sacraments and console the broken-hearted and unemployed.

 

The area’s staggering 90 percent unemployment is largely due to the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire — the largest wildfire in Arizona history — that not only consumed 250,000 acres of forest on the reservation but shut down the lumber mill, the only industry in Cibecue. The loss of jobs has led to a spike in suicides, alcoholism and physical abuse, says Father Fronske.

 

“I couldn’t continue here without the salary subsidy,” says Father Fronske, who may find only $150 in the Sunday collections for all three churches.

 

Father works and sleeps in quarters at the back of St. Francis Church. Until two years ago, he had to get up several times during the winter at night to stoke the wood stove so the pipes wouldn’t freeze. The church now has a propane furnace.

 

However, Father Fronske still gets up some nights, roused from his sleep by a knock on the door. Often it’s a tribal member looking for shelter or a meal, and in true Franciscan spirit, the poet and songwriter never turns them away.

 

“It is Jesus Who comes to the door,” Father says. “How can I say no?”