palmsundaymexico

I Enjoyed It All
A conversation with American pioneer missionary
Frank Kichak CSSp

From

Spiritan Missionary News
Volume 22, # 3
August 1998

Palm Sunday in Mexico

Fr. Frank - Palm Sunday in Coxcatlán, MEXICO

You have been a missionary for forty-four years. Would you tell our readers something of that story?

The Lord grabbed me like he grabbed Jeremiah. I planned to go into architecture, but a young Holy Ghost Father was chaplain at my vocational school and he inspired me and encouraged me to join the Spiritans back in 1944. After 10 years studying, I was sent to the “Southern Mission” in Louisiana. I spent 4 years there at a time when apartheid dictated a complete separation of black and white from the church pew to the toilet seat. One day a young white lawyer asked me why I was wasting my time with “these niggers.” “You know the people call you nigger priest,” he said. I thanked him very much. I felt happy that the whites identified me with those who had become my people. Then they shipped me up to Pittsburgh to work with the Holy Childhood and the Propagation of the Faith. My heart was not in this assignment. After three years I was sent back to Louisiana. I became involved in High School teaching as well as looking after a parish. We felt we had to prepare the black students for entry into their apartheid society. Teaching was the only profession open to them. I got involved in segregation and integration issues. In many, many meetings I was the only white face. In all the talk of violent, armed protest, I promoted dialogue and discussion as the way forward. Protest — yes, but in the style of Martin Luther King.

Puerto Rico and the Mid West
After ten years I heard they were looking for volunteers to go to Peru. I volunteered, not really expecting to be picked and not wanting to leave Louisiana. But I was chosen and sent to Puerto Rico to learn Spanish language and culture. Some months later my Provincial asked if I was ready to go to Peru. I said I was, but added that I was just getting involved with the Puerto Ricans. He said, “OK you stay there if you like it, we have other volunteers for Peru.” So I stayed for six years in the interior of the country where nobody else spoke English. Then back home they told me they needed a Vocation Director with Latin American missionary experience. Once more I tried to get out of an appointment: “There are some young priests who would jump at that job,” I pleaded. But it was no good; so I ended up in the Mid West based in Chicago. I worked through the universities staying in various Newman Centres. These were the Vietnam years in the USA. Most of the university students were more interested m getting the Americans out of Vietnam than in thinking about religious life. After three years I went back to Puerto Rico.

Mexico
One day a letter arrived from the U.S. Spiritan group in Mexico. There were only four of them and they were looking for additional members. I had heard about Mexico, but had never thought of going there. However, I was only forty-seven, I liked to walk and I was used to climbing the hills of Puerto Rico. Knowing neither the work nor the terrain of Mexico I thought I might go there for a week or so to find out about them. I liked what I saw — it reminded me of Puerto Rico: orange and mango trees, coffee, bananas, hills. But what got me more than the geography was the people. I saw where the Indians lived and how they lived. They were even poorer than the Puerto Ricans. Back at home they didn’t like the idea of my going to Mexico. “We need you here. If you leave we’ll have to give up your parish.” “Give me three years,” I asked. “Let me see if I can handle it. If I can’t I’ll write and tell you I’m coming back.” They’re still waiting for my letter.
Twenty-two years later, I just hope they don’t touch me for another few years while I still have a lot of energy and interest and love for the Mexicans and above all the Mexican Indians.

What changes have you seen in those twenty two years?

There were very few paved roads in those early years. We parked our jeeps and just hoofed it for two or three hours with the catechist. There were no chapels in the missions We celebrated Mass under trees and under the sun. The catechists brought me on monthly visits to their villages to spend a day there. Today the majority of these villages have roads right in to their centre. In our time here we have built over a hundred chapels. In the Coxcatlán area one Canadian Spiritan built ten chapels in four years. My first baptism involved forty-five babies. My first group wedding was thirty-five couples. It took me all morning. They had to come to town to be baptized and married. Now the people don’t have to walk for a couple of hours to get here — they have their own chapel. Over the years the government has built a number of small modern schools and health clinics in the rural areas. They could do a lot more particularly in the area of vocational education. There is still a great shortage of equipment and supplies.

How about the Mexican Church then and now?

We had very few priests when I came here. The diocesan priests concentrated their efforts on the townspeople, the Mestizos. They had very little time for the Indians except for emergency situations. We were not accepted by the local priests for some years. Our presence here as missionaries told them that they were a mission country in need of evangelization. We were considered foreigners, Americans, gringos. We celebrated our 25th anniversary in Mexico two years ago. We decided to make stoles as a gift to all the priests in attendance. How many to make? The total number of local priests was forty-five. I presumed only ten or twelve would come. To our pleasant surprise at least thirty turned up. We felt we were finally accepted.

What changes have occurred among the Spiritans?

We started as an all-American group; we are now an international group. Four or five of us saw we absolutely needed personnel from other provinces. There are over 100,000 Indians in this area alone apart from the Mestizos in the towns. All are poor, all need religious education. Spiritans from other countries gradually joined us, beginning with Quebec: Alois Gutweiller, Antoine Mercier, Gerard Duchesne had much to do with the development of the Mexican mission. You sent people like Joe Burg and Jim Burnie both of whom helped us tremendously. We’re thankful that Jim bought that house in Altamira. It’s now the base for our formation programme. He never knew he was buying a formation house, but that’s how it worked out. I hope you in TransCanada can continue helping our Mexican missions in the area of formation and enabling us to buy the sewing machines and carpentry tools for our courses here. Little by little missionaries came to us from France, Poland, Trinidad, Portugal. I told Pierre Schouver (Superior General) that an international group was beautiful as an ideal, beautiful also in practice, but not that easy. We come from different mentalities, we have different ways of thinking, different cultures Humanly speaking it takes a little time to adapt, to become aware of our differences, to understand them and to bounce with them. It has been hard. But the common goal of being here to help develop a local native church among the Indians has kept us together. We will have our first Indian Holy Ghost Father in December, a Nahuatl from Coxcatlán and after him a Huasteca from Aquismon. Most of our vocations come from our own missions. Our witness has attracted them. Our first plan was to promote diocesan priests and only then to seek Spiritans. So most of our seminarians first tried the local church, but because of the strained relationship between the Mestizos and the Indians, they felt disliked in the seminary. They asked to come with us and we had to start our seminary before we had planned to do so.

What means most to you in your missionary work here in Mexico?

I would like to see a greater lay leadership among Indians and townspeople. They are still very, very dependent on the priest and the government. I’m interested in getting these people to think for themselves, to become more responsible for where they’re going — religiously, politically, socially. This week two catechists asked me to plead with the presidente (mayor) for funds to repair the roof of their chapel. I told them to try to raise the funds in their village and, if this was not possible, I would go with them to the presidente — but they would have to do the talking. Because of the class system in Mexico it will take years for them to be able to speak publicly for themselves. The average Indian today goes up to Grade 6. Their fathers and mothers didn’t go beyond Grade 3. Many of them cannot sign their own name. The only Indians I know who have reached university are our seminarians. It’s very rare to see a professional Indian. Our catechists are the local church leaders. They encourage us, but also frustrate us. They feel they should not do anything unless they’re told to by the padre. I would like them to deal with local issues and only come to us when they feel they can’t handle them. I would love to see the day when all our missions here are led by one of their own and we could go to another part of Mexico or to another country. Even now I believe we should be going outside the Huastecan area to the huge slum parishes around the cities such as our parish in Tampico.

What have the indigenous people taught you?

It’s only with the passing of the years that I realize how much I’ve been taught. We are reminded how little we give even when we think we’re giving a lot. We have received much more than we have given. The patience of these Indians, their simplicity, their religious faith put us to shame. We see them come here for Sunday Mass and remember that it took them two or three hours to get here on foot — and they do this every Sunday. We see the catechists sacrificing themselves without being paid. Maybe we will see some of our Indian Spiritans working with your native people in Canada one day?

You seem very much at home here.

Oh, yes. When people ask me if I still like it in Mexico, I say “Well I’ve been here twenty-two years.” That’s all I have to say. My friends sometimes ask me, “When are you going to come back to civilization?” I tell them I feel perfectly at home in Mexico. I don’t see myself going back to the States. The U.S. Western province asked us where we want to be buried when we die. I told them, “Bury me where I drop.” I’d prefer to be buried right here in Mexico, like Pat Townsend, with the Indians. I know the Indians will remember me, and come and pray for me far more often than if I was buried in some God-forsaken cemetery.

If they bury you here, what epitaph would you like them to write?

Hmmm ... I don’t really know at the moment ... How about, “I enjoyed it all." Yes, I’ve enjoyed my twenty-two years in Mexico with my people. I continue to enjoy my stay here. It gets rough at times, but knowing what I’m about keeps me going.