A vehicle for an extensive parish
The island nation of Indonesia comprises over 17,000 separate islands, over 6,000 of which are inhabited. Geographically speaking, most of them are part of Asia, though some are part of Australasia. With over 273 million inhabitants, Indonesia is the most populated Muslim nation in the world. However, the religious makeup of the country includes various other faiths. For example, the island of Flores is mostly Catholic, while most of the inhabitants on the island of Sumba are Protestant Christians. The reason for this goes back to 1913 under the Dutch colonial rule, when the government sought to avoid religious rivalries and therefore assigned the island of Flores to the Catholic missionaries and the island of Sumba to the Protestant missionaries. However, a considerable proportion of the population here still follows the traditional Marapu religion, which is characterized by a strong element of ancestor worship.
There are also many Catholics on the island of Sumba today. In 1957, German Redemptorists arrived there and in 1994, they established the parish of Saint Andrew Ngallu on the eastern part of the island. At that time, there were around a thousand Catholic faithful, but today there are over 3,700, with the number growing by around 100-150 each year. The parish covers a wide area, with some 21 chapel-based communities located up to 57 km from the parish centre. Given the poor road conditions, which worsen during the rainy season, the journey can take up to two or three hours. Indeed, some of the villages can only be reached during the dry season, when the river levels are low enough or dry up, so that vehicles can cross safely.
Father Yakobus Umbu Warata, the Redemptorist Provincial, has requested our help for his priests here, who urgently need a suitable all-terrain vehicle for their ministry. We would like to help with a contribution of $27,600.
