Devout First Nations Catholics crave Native clergy

Father Freddy Valdivia begins Sunday Mass the same way he does every week in the St. Paul’s Parish in Brocket, Alta.

“Welcome everyone. I hope you are all well,” he says from behind the pulpit in the modest church on the Piikani reserve. It’s 10 a.m. and his congregation is made up of entire families, most from the reserve, and all First Nations people.

“I have been sick this past week. I have had…” said Valdivia, pausing, working to conjure up the right word.

“A cold?” shouts a 10-year-old boy in a gentle tone from the audience, whose curious expression reveals that he sincerely wants to assist his priest. Helping Valdivia find the correct word is perhaps something this child is used to doing each Sunday.

“A fever,” Valdivia exclaims. He is visibly relieved and proud that he remembers the term in English.
Valdivia is originally from Lake Titicaca on the border between Peru and Bolivia. He has been serving the parish since 2008, when he was assigned to go to the small town by Frederick Henry, Calgary’s Catholic bishop.

“I didn’t ask for this parish. The bishop gave me this parish and I said OK,” explained Valdivia with a thick accent and his signature chuckle.

At the beginning of April, the Bishop Henry went public with his goal to convince the Vatican to allow him to ordain married Aboriginal men. According to Bishop Henry, overturning the celibacy requirement of Catholic priests, would help encourage religious leadership in Native communities.

“We’ve raised the issue a couple of times in our visits to Rome,” said the bishop in an April 3 CBC News report. “We would like permission to ordain married men on some of our Native communities because of just the absence of a Native clergy.”

Because there is a shortage of priests in Canada, people such as Father Valdivia are brought in to fill the gap.
Valdivia, who will serve a five-year term, said he has always wanted to travel and work with Canada’s First Nations people and has been welcomed with open arms by community members.

Rose Pard is one of the members who welcomed Valdivia. As a devoted Catholic who visits the same church every week, she said Valdivia’s Indigenous roots helps the members feel more comfortable with him.
She admits, however, that she prays for the day her church is led by a North American Native person.

“I always pray for Native men and women to become a priest or a nun,” said Pard. “I think it would be nice to have a First Nation priest…We would have a connection with them.”

As a member of St. Paul’s Elders Council, Pard began volunteering with the church when she was 16 years old. After spending the past 50 years celebrating wedding anniversaries with her husband Dennis and the births of their five children at the same parish, Pard said her church has never had a First Nations priest. She has even prayed for one of her own children to enter the priesthood, but that prayer did not come true.

Pard agrees with Bishop Henry that ordained priests should be allowed to get married. Her conversation alludes to the recent controversy swirling around the Catholic church and sexual misconduct against children in Ireland.

Some believe the church’s strict rule on the chastity of priests is to blame for the numerous incidences of pedophilia within the ranks of the Catholic Church. An Ipsos-Reid survey carried out in the first week of April revealed that at least two million Canadians know someone who has been sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest.

Annette Bad Eagle is confident that if married men were to be ordained, there would be interest from men within the spiritually devoted First Nations community.

Bad Eagle is a part of the three-piece choir that performed at St. Paul’s church on April 11. Bad Eagle’s 14-year-old daughter and mother joined her in leading the church in hymns during Valdivia’s service.

She credits her faith as the reason she was able to survive various troubling times throughout her life.
Celibacy within the priesthood is a topic that is often debated. Some argue that it is unnatural and praise certain sects of the Eastern Rite that have a long tradition of married priests.

Windspeaker attempted to contact Bishop Henry, but our calls were not returned.