On Sunday morning, the small church on this remote South Pacific island is packed for Mass.

A choir, backed by drums and an accordion, sings in the native language, while Father Joe Navarrete celebrates the liturgy in three languages: Rapa Nui for the native islanders, Spanish for the transplants from the Chilean mainland, and English for the tourists.

“This is a very missionary parish,” he says. “I come from another culture, so I have to be a missionary and learn to understand the culture. Being a missionary to foreigners has also been new for me.”

Easter Island, known as Rapa Nui (which also is the name of its people and language) is best known for its imposing moai, the huge carved stone statues that were the center of ancestor worship in the ancient culture. The forebears of today’s islanders arrived from other parts of Polynesia about 1,500 years ago, and the population grew until it stretched the island’s fragile natural resources to the breaking point.

Researchers believe that deforestation and depletion of fish and other resources triggered the collapse of the culture, which was finished off by slave traders who raided the island and took most of the remaining natives to Peru. When some finally returned, they brought with them diseases to which the island’s few remaining inhabitants had no resistance.

By the 19th century, just more than 100 Rapa Nui remained on the island, more than 2,500 miles west of the coast of Chile.

Missionary Territory

Since the 1990s, however, Easter Island has been on an upswing. The population is now nearly 4,000. About 2,200 are Rapa Nui, while the others have moved here from other countries or from Chile, of which Easter Island is a province even though it’s 2,400 miles away.

But the influx of outsiders has placed new pressures on the culture. This is only exacerbated by the comings and goings of 18,000 tourists a year. Many attend Sunday Mass — some tour books recommend that even non-Catholics take the time to hear the choir — and become part of Father Navarrete’s transient flock.

Although small and far from other land, “the island has opened up new horizons for me,” the priest says. Many tourists seek him out after Mass or during the week for counseling, and he often receives letters from travelers telling him how much of an impact their contact with the parish made on them.

He worries, however, that the number of outsiders moving to the island, combined with the growth of tourism, will overwhelm what remains of the culture. It was already fragile, he points out, when the first Catholic missionary arrived in 1864.

“It’s going to be lost soon,” he says. “Many children no longer speak the language.”

The Church’s role on the island has evolved over the centuries. The first missionary was French Brother Eugenio Eyraud of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He arrived in 1864 and died in 1868.

The missionary who most shaped island life, however, was Father Sebastian Englert, a German Capuchin who arrived in 1935 and died in 1969 in the United States, where he was giving talks to raise funds for conservation of the island’s archaeological sites and cultural heritage.

Protective Pastor

As Mass ends, Father Navarrete leads the congregation in a prayer composed by Father Englert. With eerie prescience, the decades-old prayer invokes protection against outside influences that threaten to erode the local culture and traditional ways of life.

Although he originally traveled to the island to do archaeological work for the University of Chile, Father Englert also took on the role of pastor. In the process, he became extremely protective of the local people against outside forces that he feared would overwhelm them.

He called on his parishioners not to marry foreigners or people from the Chilean mainland and not to leave the island. At one point, he embraced the establishment of a colony for Hansen’s disease patients because it would isolate the island even more.

“Some people saw him as a dictator who prohibited things, but his intention was to conserve the culture,” Father Navarrete says.

Those fears were not entirely unfounded. While it has brought prosperity, tourism has been accompanied by increases in alcoholism, domestic violence and sexually transmitted diseases. Father Navarrete worries about islanders who marry foreigners and leave, only to return later when the relationships break down.

He is also concerned about young people, who must move to the Chilean mainland for college. Because of shortcomings at the local public school, some families send their teen-agers to mainland high schools so they will be better prepared for college.

In a culture that values the extended family, that early separation is difficult, Father Navarrete points out. And the trend has caused a jump in pregnancies among unmarried adolescents.

The parish is addressing those problems by focusing on education, building a parish school that will impart values and provide a solid high-school education so students will not have to leave the island until they are ready for college.

Construction has begun, but the project faces an uphill battle because Chile, while poor by U.S. standards, is better off than most other Latin American countries, making it difficult to interest international agencies in funding the school.

Father Navarrete has appealed to individuals, families and parishes around the world to sponsor a classroom at a cost of about $14,000. He hopes the first of the 480 students will begin classes in 2006.

“The biggest challenge for the parish in the future,” he says, “will be having an influence on families through the school.”              

(CNS)