Religion

Here are a few events that took place a while ago that help to illustrate how Catholic a country Chile is.

Cardinal’s Birthday

I think it was during my first month here that we attended a mass given by one of the cardinals in Chile. It was his birthday so I guess he wanted to throw himself a big party. Anyway, after school one day we (the people who work at San Lorenzo) chartered a bus downtown to the cathedral that is located at the Plaza de Armas (the main square downtown). By the time we got there the cathedral was already packed and so Cole and I, along with a bunch of other people from San Lorenzo, San Benito and San Anselmo, stood on one side of the church. Of course, it took a long time for things to get going and during this time Cole and I both realized we needed to go to the bathroom. We were still pretty new to life in Chile then and of course we did not know where the bathrooms were located at the Santiago Cathedral (not that I know where they are now). So two kind high school kids from San Lorenzo took us to the nearest bathroom, which happened to be located in a mall, three blocks away, on the third floor. I found it hard to believe that this was the closest bathroom. The two kids let us know that this was a good place to pick up chicks and pointed out all the hot girls to us. On our way back to the cathedral I thought to myself that we probably missed some of the mass, since we were gone for so long. Then I remember that we were in Chile, and not a whole lot of things run on time, so we probably didn’t miss much at all. Sure enough when we walked in the front door, there was a huge procession of priests and the birthday boy himself (the cardinal) looked right at us. Other interesting facts about the mass are; the entire gospel was sung and there were two jumbotrons so that people with bad seats could see what was going on. Ok so they weren’t jumbotrons like at a stadium but they were pretty big.

A view of the Santiago Cathedral after the mass.

Procession of the Virgin

Yeah so I don’t remember a whole lot about this one. The Virgin of Carmen is like the patron mother of Chile or something and they had a big parade/procession through downtown on her feast day. Here are some pictures. There was a big float carried in the parade with the statue of the virgin and a whole mess of people followed it along its route from the cathedral at the Plaza de Armas, around downtown and back to the cathedral. All the Catholic schools were there too and so we hopped in with the people from San Lorenzo and the rest of the Manquehue schools.

The float

Some crazy dancing they had afterwards, it comes from the desert in the north of Chile.

Caminata

I went on a 27 km walk over a large hill with 80,000 other Chileans. Here is how it went down. It was a pilgrimage for Santa Theresa de los Andes who is one of the two saints in Chile. She died young and wrote a bunch of letters and the pilgrimage ends at the sanctuary that she used to live at. It started on the other side of a huge hill.

I woke up around 4:45 AM, ate some chocolate frosted flakes (first cereal I had eaten in a while) and we were out the door at 5:15 so that we would be ready for the bus that left San Lorenzo at 6 am. The bus ride was probably between 30 and 45 minutes and I passed the time talking with the 7th grade girls, waving to the people on the dozens of other busses going in the same direction (which the 7th grade girls found hilarious) and I even managed to fall asleep for a few minutes (despite the girls’ best efforts). The pilgrimage started on a road in a small town, kind of in the middle of nowhere, outside Santiago. We managed to find the rest of the people from Manquehue and the three schools (Lorenzo, Anselmo, Benito). There were vendors selling bags of tiny pieces of white paper (confetti actually) and so that stuff was everywhere and we stood in a huge line for twenty minutes and every once and while someone would throw a handful of confetti into someone else’s face. We finally got moving and for the first kilometer there was a guy walking next to us playing a guitar over some sort of portable PA system he rigged up. That got pretty annoying, but then we finally got ahead of him. The first 5 or so kilometers of the walk before the big hill were flat and there were still houses and farms along the way. So there were a lot of vendors along the road selling all sorts of food, including empanadas, which were really tempting me, but I didn’t buy one which was probably a good thing. I would have been moving pretty slow after an empanada. I did buy some delicious strawberries on the way up and shared them with some of the students I was walking with. (Oh yeah, a bunch of students from San Lorenzo came along). We got to the summit sometime in the afternoon and had lunch there. I enjoyed my packed lunch of two ham and cheese sandwiches (which were surprisingly good despite being left out all night long as well as baking the entire morning in my backpack), some delicious clementines and a few cookies. We got walking again after lunch and my legs were already pretty sore. Going downhill wasn’t much better than going uphill too.

The start

Going up.

Santa Theresa de Los Andes



There were a lot of people

Stopping for lunch at the summit

The view from the top, not bad


Carrying the San Lorenzo banner, with Elle.

Towards the end of the downhill section, with about 8 km or so to go, I noticed I was running low on water. I figured I could probably go the rest of the way and be fine but I was with some other students from San Lorenzo and we decided to stop at one of the water stations, which was just a huge truck with a water tank on it, like the kind you might see hosing down streets or watering public parks. So I waited in line with Elle, a 9th grade girl from San Lorenzo for about 30-40. The line seemed to be moving ok but when we finally got to the part of the line alongside the truck, it seemed like we were never going to make it to the end where the water was being dispensed. There were actually two lines. One was the real line that ran alongside the truck and the other was a – pardon my French – clusterf%&$ at the end of the real line right where the water was being distributed. The workers stopped pouring out water for a couple of minutes and rumors went around that there was no water left. Then the water came back on. Then it stopped again when I was really close to the end. Then all the water station workers yelled at us because a ton of people weren’t in line but were just clustered around the hose. Then they turned the water back on and there was a mad dash to of people trying to fill up their water bottles. I remained patient and calm on the outside of the scrum and waited for my turn. Then they turned the water off again and yelled at us. Then they turned the water back on but instead of pointing the large fire hose towards the ground and letting people fill their bottles, they decided to spray the water into the air and douse the crowd. Then they turned the water off again and told us that this station was now closed because none of us were in line (except for me, the other students from San Lorenzo and about 50 people behind us who had also patiently waited in line for over 30 minutes for the water that was promised to them when they sign up for the pilgrimage). They told us there would be other water stations on the way down with water, which turned out to not be true. I wanted to yell at the people working at the station “What would Jesus do?” but I had not yet mastered the conditional verb tense and I wasn’t sure how to translate it. I was just pissed.

About 1 km later I bought some Orange Crush and lemon soda and gave some to the students I was walking with. It didn’t do much to quench my thirst. Later on there was a house along the way giving out water with a hose. I thought it was a little shady but I got some anyway and drank it, figuring it was ok. I offered some to the girls I was with and they told me it was dirty and didn’t want to drink it. They also advised me not to drink it. I then realized it did taste and smell kinda funny, but by then it was too late. The last part of the walk was on one side of a highway that led to the town of Los Andes where the sanctuary is. I amused the junior high girls by asking every car and truck that passed by to honk their horn. There were also a bunch of kids behind us who heckled every car and truck that had Argentina license plates. The big Chilean win over the Argentina football team had just happened and so they all yelled “1-0” and held up fingers indicating what the score had been. We finally got the sanctuary in the middle of the mass that was going on. Afterwards everyone started celebrating and a small riot erupted in our group, led mostly by the students from San Lorenzo. They are a lot more fun than those rich kids from San Benito and San Anselmo. Everyone was jumping around, singing, dancing, throwing confetti in people’s faces and dousing each other with water. It was just nuts. All in all it was a great experience and despite walking 27 km over a huge hill in pretty hot weather, I had a great time. I felt like I got to know the kids from San Lorenzo a lot better and we really bonded. When I got home I ate dinner and a bunch of ice cream, took a much needed shower and realized that I had been in Chile for exactly 2 months.

The last leg of the journey


27 km in the Chilean sun took a toll on my hair.


The riot afterwards. I cant believe they had this much energy left

Cole and I with Mario, the dean of San Lorenzo, and some high school girls.



Immaculate Conception

Speaking of pilgrimages, there is an even bigger pilgrimage in Chile on the feast day of the Immaculate Conception, which just happened a little while ago. It isn’t organized like the Santa Theresa de Los Andes pilgrimage, but this year around 600,000 Chileans walked from their homes to a sanctuary where there is a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Cole and I weren’t up for this one. I cant remember where the sanctuary is but it’s a lot farther than 27km from Santiago. Instead we decided to go up Cerro San Cristobal (a big hill right next to our house with a statue of the Virgin at the top that looks over the entire city). We had heard that a lot of people go up there on the day of the Immaculate Conception so we figured we could check it out. Plus we didn’t have school that (it’s a national holiday in Chile – 3 day weekend). I think we were a little late getting up there; most of the people seemed to be coming down already. But it was still pretty cool. There were a lot of people up there and the views of the city, even though it was smoggy, were amazing.



The north side of the hill. This is the "Latin American" side of the hill, as I like to think of it. San Lorenzo, in the communa of Recoleta, is on this side of the hill

South side, Providencia (where I live), Vitacura, Las Condes and the other affluent communas. This is the "European" side. I think my house is somewhere right in the middle of this pic.





The statue of the Virgin at the top of the hill.

Confessions? No thanks. I didn't climb this hill so I could feel guilty

Priests only you say? Looks like I can't go this way. I have been throwing a lot of stuff out there about religion so I just thought I would emphasize this point.

Santiago, looking towards the west from the very top of Cerro San Cristobal. There are only some 6 million people in Santiago, but from the top of this hill, this city seems like it is the biggest city in the world. From up here all you can see is the city, until the mountains or the smog obstructs your view.

So basically the main point of all this, besides letting you know some of the stuff I have done here, is to illustrate how important religion is in the lives of the people here. And that’s not just the case because I was sent to live with a Lay, Catholic, Benedictine community. It seems like everyone in Chile is pretty serious about being Catholic.