In interview with Bishop Heim

One way is to become a Franciscan missionary like Bishop William Heim.

"I live practically in the geographic center of the Amazon rain forest," said Bishop Heim, who has been visiting in the area for the past few weeks. "My place is called Itaituba, and it's the most recently erected prelacy in Brazil."

A prelacy is a missionary diocese; this September, it will be exactly eight years old. "I live on the Tapajos River," he said, "which is a very large river and one of the major tributaries of the Amazon."

Where is it?

Bishop Heim's first reaction upon receiving the notification that he was going to be a missionary bishop was to find a map to see where the place was.

"I's very remote," he said. "I'm 750 miles from the nearest paved rod. I do most of my traveling by flying in a small plane. I occasionally travel by boat. It's very difficult to get around, especially during the rainy season, which takes up two-thirds of the year."

His qualifications for becoming the bishop came from his 22 years of experience as a Franciscan missionary in the central part of Brazil. "The area I'm in charge of is roughly the size of all of New York State plus all of New England," he said. "There are only five parishes, and a couple of them are 200 miles long. It takes me three hours by light plane to go from one end to the other."

Just about everyone in his prelacy speaks Portuguese, the national language of Brazil, but there is a tribe of Indians that speaks a native language.

Simple life

"I don't know if being a bishop has changed me in any way," he said. "I'm still very much at the disposal of the people. I live a very simple life; I don't have any employees in my house. I do my own clerical work. I don't have a cook or a housekeeper."

When people come to see him, they knock on his door, and he opens it and admits them. "They come in and say what they want," he said. "Sometimes, they seek counseling; and sometimes,it's confession. Many times, it's an inquiry for me to attend a sick person."

He believes this approach is valuable because he doesn't lose his pastoral touch with the people. "And I don't get bogged down with so much administrative work," he said. "I do my own correspondence. I keep my own books. I find time to do that when I'm unoccupied with other pastoral duties.

Travel time

Much of his work entails traveling around the prelacy. "I try to get to all of the communities," he said. "I visit the parishes, although this is difficult because of the poor roads. Many places, I don't have a priest to send, so I go myself because it's a chance to meet people and celebrate a Mass with them. I do baptisms, marriages, confessions " whatever needs to be done. Many times as bishop, I find myself being a substitute for a priest."

He never feels any danger living in the jungle except on those occasions when he's flying some place and a bad storm hits. "Flying over a rain forest, all you see are the tops of trees," he said. "There's no place to land and no roads. As far as danger from the people, I've never left it."

Almost all of the people are poor. "I live in a city of 130,000 people," he said, "and I have only two priests, both of whom are 65, plus myself to serve them. Many of the people in that city don't have enough to eat during the day."

Back home

Being back in the area for a few weeks has reminded him about how enjoyable it is to ride on an asphalt road, but he is concerned that Americans are beginning to lose their sense of working hard and also their belief in working for the good of the community.

"I also think our people in Brazil show more of a religious fervor," he said. "Our people are very much inclined toward music. They love to sing during liturgical celebrations. Our celebrations seem much more lively than some of the parishes I visited up here, where the congregation doesn't sing and where they act like they're just kind of there."

Being a missionary bishop means there is very little pomp and ceremony that many diocesan bishops are familiar with. "I celebrate all the Holy Week ceremonies without even an altar boy," he said. "The people know they can come to me whenever they want and be received as a friend. But still, a bishop is considered the religious authority of the place, and he's respected as that."

Vocations

One of his great preoccupations is to foster and promote native vocations. "They're beginning to appear now," he said. "We currently have five seminarians, and five or six years down the road I hope to have some ordinations."

One of Bishop Heim's reasons in coming back to the area is to encourage people to become missionaries or at least to help out with a financial donation.

"In most of the Latin American countries just about everyone is baptized,"he said, "and I feel we have a great obligation to evangelize the baptized. It's this evangelization process that the mission is all about, to teach people to know, love and serve God. These people don't get that from just being baptized. We the missionaries can be extremely important in this process, with God's grace, to help these people come to know who God is and what He's all about."

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