A Variety of Religious Experiences

Though it wasn’t planned, I visited four different churches on four of the Sundays I was in Chile.

Iglesia de San Francisco en Valdivia

Thrust into theology:

The first Sunday, I stopped at Iglesia de San Francisco en Valdivia, a Gothic stone Roman Catholic church located in the Zona Típica. Valdivia’s oldest church, it was established in the mid-1500s to initiate missionary work in southern Chile. Over the centuries, earthquakes, fires, and Mapuche Indian uprisings forced the clergy to relocate and rebuild San Francisco several times. Established on its present site in 1786, the church features two historic stained glass windows next to the altar. Though the building has survived earthquakes and tsunamis, its outer walls have not escaped the city’s abundance of graffiti.

My intention was to give thanks for a safe journey to Valdivia, as the sailors did in centuries past after they crossed the Atlantic and reached the port of San Juan, Puerto Rico. A young woman spoke to me briefly while I sat in a pew. When I left, she approached me in the narthex. She had a friend, she said, who’d suffered a serious accident. Did I think God was punishing her friend?  Startled, I struggled to respond (in Spanish), replying I felt God was kind: though unable to change the laws of nature, God could offer her friend support. The woman seemed satisfied with my answer.

Sunday socializing:

The Lutheran church arrived in Chile with German immigrants in the mid-1800s. Originally conducted in German, most Lutheran services are now in Spanish. The Lutheran Evangelical Church in Valdivia sits around the corner from the public plaza. On a drizzly Sunday morning, I decided to attend a service.

Of a pleasant modern concrete design, the sanctuary has windows overlooking a small patio, a pipe organ, and a white screen with gold cross behind the altar. A nice woman in a red sweater welcomed me, pointing out that the pastor was not there and women in the church would be officiating, speaking about their fellow Lutheran women in Suriname. The service was informal, with several hymns, a presentation about the Suriname women and a short sermon on taking care of God’s creation, ending with an invitation to join together for a coffee social afterwards. I attended, sampling a few cookies and some fruit. No one spoke to me, and, after ten minutes of circling the tables, a smile pasted on my face, I slipped away.

The smuggled branch:

Catedral de Nahuel Huapi

Palm Sunday morning found my daughter Astrid and me in Bariloche, Argentina, standing in lovely gardens in front of the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de Nahuel Huapi. A handsome, carefully maintained, neo-Gothic church, it was built out of concrete and local white stone, with a steeple towering above the city. In the shape of the Latin cross, the temple features beautiful stained glass windows representing regional figures, including Padre Mascardi (mentioned in a previous post, The Route of the Andean Lakes, Part I). An alerce wood statue of Our Lady of Nahuel Huapi is a replica of one Mascardi transported across the Andes and set on the banks of the lake in the 1600s.

We entered the church as the Palm Sunday mass was in progress. The temple was full, with parishioners rising and responding to the priests’ words. Plant branches in a basket substituted for palm fronds. I selected one, and, the next day, took part of it with me on the return trip to Chile. At the border, officials announced that no plants, or parts of plants, could be transported across the border. Fearful of being caught, I smuggled my branch in the pages of a Roberto Ampuero novel, and did the same on my return to the U.S. I still have the branch.

A devout dog:

The  Saturday of Holy Week, I was sitting in the plaza, reading. When I looked up, I saw a stray German shepherd sleeping at my feet. He was the spitting image of Dutch, our departed shepherd from Puerto Rico. Tears came to my eyes (yes, after all these years). I wanted to pet the dog but feared frightening him.

The reincarnated Dutch

The next day, Easter Sunday, I passed Valdivia’s main Catholic church, Catedral de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, in the plaza. A simple concrete structure with a tall steeple, it was built in 1988 after the 1960 earthquake destroyed the previous one. Deciding to see if Easter mass was being celebrated, I climbed the stairs to the second floor and entered the temple. Every pew was taken. Priests and altar servers dressed jubilantly in white robes ministered in front of a gleaming white altarpiece. And there, in the midst of the pageantry — center aisle, three-quarters of the way back — lay Dutch, sprawled out in repose. “I know that dog!” I whispered to the man who had opened the temple door for me. The man nodded. “Whenever it’s cold,” he told me, “the dog comes to mass to warm up.”

I don’t know which inspired me more—the worshipping dog, or the church that let the dog worship.