Around Santo Domingo

Wednesday's Orientation session at breakfast

Wednesday morning comes early after only what seems like a few hours sleep.  But the hotel offers a very nice buffet breakfast.  Bob Snow joins us to give us an orientation for the upcoming week.  He talks about this diocese from his sixteen years of experience that he and his wife, Ellen, have spent here.  It has changed a great deal in that time, and continues to grow dramatically under the leadership of Bishop Holguin.

Cathedral Church of the Epiphany

We begin our week of visitations with some churches around the city of Santo Domingo, the first being the Cathedral Church of the Epiphany.  Here, we meet the Rev. Ashton Brooks, originally from the British Virgin Islands.  He was the first priest to be ordained in this diocese.  He gives us some of the history of the diocese and of the church.  The diocese was formed by families coming the BVI with the sugar cane industry in 1897 in the town of San Pedro de Macoris (which we'll visit tomorrow).  Bishop Holly, the first African American bishop in the Episcopal Church, ordained the Rev. Wilson be sent from Haiti to the DR to establish a congregation.  Along with Haiti, the DR became a part of the Episcopal Church, but only under the supervision of the diocese of Puerto Rico.  Most of the early work done here was through missionary priests.

    

In 1936 the Rev. Charles Barnes arrived in the DR to serve the people of Epiphany, Santo Domingo.  In 1937, the armed forces of dictator, Rafael Trujillo, werekilling hundreds of Haitians along the
border.  Barnes was sending information back to the US in an attempt to end the killings.  Some of them were intercepted by Trujillo's soldiers.  On the night of July 26th, 1938, the Rev. Barnes was arrested and taken before the dictator where he was beaten tdeath and his body deposite in the rectory of the church.  A church employee was arrested for the crime and later found hung in his cell.  There was proof however, of the dictator's involvement.  The priest's remains are interred beneath a stone tablet entombed in the floor of the church.  In order to receive communion, people have to walk across it each time. It's a powerful reminder of the cost of walking the way of the cross.


The folks at the Cathedral run a feeding program every Tuesday morning.  We'll have a chance to help with it next Tuesday.  The congregation can to supprt forty people.  Anyone who shows up receives a hearty breakfast, but only the forty people on the list, some of whom are homeless, receive a small bag of groceries intended to keep them fed for a few days.  On one of his previous trips, Julius photographed the forty people so the congregation could post them on a bulletin board at the entry to the sanctuary and get to know them.  There is a waiting list to become one of the foty - unfortunately, it basically takes someone dying in order for someone to move up on the list.  More on the program next Tuesday!


This is the baptismal font at the Cathedral.  Like most Episcopal Churches, it's near the entrance to the church, symbolic of baptism as the means of entering the Body of Christ.  It's a beautiful, carved mahoghany font.  At the time we are there, the light sreams in on it, making the polished wood glow. 

The Cathedral has a beautiful pipe organ, though we don't have an opportunity to hear it.  It was sent in pieces from the States.

The Very Rev. Ashton Brooks

After we get finished in the sanctuary, we get a tour of the rest of the property, including the Cathedral's school.  The little children are very cute and are happy to have us interrupt their classes.  In the DR, children can go to public schools for free, but of course pay for private schools, including the Episcopal schools.  Many of the families are terribly poor.  The diocese tries to provide as many scholarships as possible across the diocese.  Parents will sacrifice a lot to send their children to the Episcopal schools because they have such a good reputation for providing a good education.  



From the Cathedral, we go to another part of Santo Domingo to St. Andrew's Church and School.  We tour the school first.  It's a pre-K through grade 12, so there are hundreds of children.  They all have uniforms, though the older girls and boys find their own ways to stylize it.  School is so universal - the boys are showing off for the girls and the girls are pal-ing around, arm in arm, talking about the boys.  There is a magnificent tree out on the playground.  It's huge, with danging, vine-like roots.  I wonder how long it's been providing shade for people.  If we were to come here, there would be painting to do.  There's a dorm to stay in as well.

Julius and Friend

 

The Church of St. Andrew was built in 1961 and is in the 'modern' architectural design, with the church-in-the-round style.  It reminds me a little of the church in which I was raised.  It's cinder block, with a central, raised altar.  The pews are all made by a 'pew crew' - a mission team that comes down and does nothing but building pews.  The pews are arcs of a circle that form rings around the altar.  Above the altar hangs a carved Christus Rex, a risen, victorious Christ.  By the color of the wood, I assume it is crafted out of mahoghany.  The color in the sanctuary is provided by banners along the back wall.

   



As we go outside of St. Andrew's, I notice a dog on the roof of a house across the street.  It reminds me of the blood hound that was on the roof of the house in Fromista, Spain.  Although the roofs here are, for the most part, flat, it still seems strange to see a dog up on a roof.  This one is taking stock of all the goings-on on the playground of the school.