Frigid temperatures and no roads – ministry in the remote Alaskan wilderness
“It may be weeks, sometimes even a couple months before you see a brother priest.”
Getting to St. Jude Catholic Church on Little Diomede – a small Alaskan island in the Bering Strait – is no easy feat.
The priests who serve at the parish must first fly from Fairbanks to Anchorage, then Anchorage to Bethel. After that, they take a bush plane from Bethel to a small native village. There, they hop on a helicopter for a flight to the island.
All told, it’s a 613-mile voyage from Fairbanks to Little Diomede.
But getting there is not the only challenge.
Ministering in rural Alaska isn’t easy either. Frigid temperatures, isolation in the vast wilderness, and native poverty are among the obstacles facing the clergy members who are brave enough to make the trek to the remote Alaskan villages.
“If you can be a priest in Alaska, you can be a priest anywhere in the world,” said Father Yakubu Aiden, a missionary priest from Nigeria who spent five years ministering in the bush when he arrived in Alaska.
“I can say that boldly,” Aiden told The Pillar. “Any priest who lives in bush, rural Alaska…nothing would shake him again.”
The Diocese of Fairbanks spans the northern two-thirds of Alaska, roughly 400,000 square miles.
In comparison, the entire state of Texas spans just 268,820 miles.
The Diocese of Fairbanks consists of 46 parishes. But it has just 24 priests. This requires a lot of traveling between remote locations, to reach parishioners in isolated regions.
Five of the diocese’s parishes are located in Fairbanks proper.
The other 41 are located in native villages – only four of which are accessible by road.
To travel to the other 37 “bush parishes,” priests must travel by boat, bush plane, or snow machine – the local term for snow mobiles.
Bush villages vary in size. Some are home to as many as 5,000 people, others have around 100.
The diocese is separated into four pastoral regions: the Road System (the nine parishes connected by roads), the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Region (villages along the Yukon river), the Interior Region, and the Northern Region.
Sister Kathy Radich OSF, has been coordinating ministry in the Yukon region for 20 years. She has become well versed in the pastoral challenges that stem from the sheer size and remoteness of the diocese.
Radich coordinates 10 priests, covering 25 parishes in a region the size of Oregon.
“It’s large and we have few ordained guys, but we make it work,” Radich told The Pillar. “Father Rich, a Jesuit, for example, covers three villages. There’s not roads between them. So you fly in the summertime, you snow machine in the wintertime. He can’t be in all three places on a Sunday.”
Beyond the sheer size and remoteness of Alaska, the climate presents another obvious challenge. Temperatures often fall well below 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, and most regions have no more than four hours of sunlight per day during the winter.
For priests who are not originally from Alaska, it can take time to get used to the extreme weather.
“I can’t say that it is fun adjusting to the cold,” said Fr. Aiden, who came to Alaska from Nigeria. “It was a big challenge. We came in September. Now we are trying to cope with the darkness and the cold, and we were asking what’s going on here?”
“We were complaining of the cold and the light and everything, that first year.”
Bishop Steven Maekawa, O.P., of Fairbanks said the people of the region are well aware of the fact that the weather is a force beyond their control.
“We’re subject to all of the seasons…There’s a very common saying out here ‘weather permitting’,” Maekawa told The Pillar. “The plan is to do this weather permitting.”
“People ask me, ‘Oh, where are you going to be for Christmas, Bishop Steve?’ Well, I’ll explain that I’ll fly to Pilot Station on the 19th, spend three nights there. Then I’m going to fly out to Marshall, spend four nights including Christmas night out there, and then maybe snow machine to a few other villages. But it is all weather permitting.”
“It’s possible that I could get jammed up in Bethel, the jet hub, and weather might not allow me to get out to the other villages and I get stuck there.”
Father Ross Tozzi, the diocesan vicar for clergy, told The Pillar that he was once stuck on the remote island of Little Diomede for 39 days due to bad weather.
“They needed to send the helicopter, which is the only way to access the island, to Anchorage for repair,” he said.
For the islanders, 39 days without access to a helicopter bringing supplies to the local store was a stretch, but not an unprecedented one.
For Tozzi, it was a significant change of plans. But he learned to accept the reality in front of him. He said the main focus of his ministry during that time “was being present to people and offering daily Mass.”
“It was the most peaceful time in my priesthood. I could not control the weather. I could not control the parts arriving from Germany or the mechanics working in Anchorage, but I could just be present to the people.”
The harsh climate and isolation in the rural parts of Alaska can contribute to mental health challenges. And mental health treatment is not always accessible to the people living in remote bush villages.
“You will see lots of depressions and addictions and lots of death,” said Father Peter Bang, a priest originally from South Korea who is currently serving the Diocese of Fairbanks.
“I was in a village of 500 people for two months, and there were eight deaths. It’s lots of young death and many suicides, and you just need to be be there for the family.”
Priests are not immune to the challenges of loneliness. With just two dozen priests to serve at nearly four dozen parishes, priests are almost always stationed alone.
“During my first one and a half years, there was loneliness, real loneliness. And that was dangerous,” Aiden recounted. “But what helped me was the connection I have with people back at home. I would talk to family and friends back in Nigeria for hours on the phone and that would help the loneliness a lot.”
As time went on, he said, he also developed friendships with the villagers, which helped.
“Sometimes we are out racing with a snow machine with them. We are out hunting or we are just visiting and just making some noise with the people,” he said. “This helps us to build up a reputation with them, but also helps us combat loneliness.”
The Diocese of Fairbanks is well aware of the threat posed by isolation. It takes a proactive approach, bringing clergy members together multiple times a year for fellowship, rest, and a chance to check in.
“It may be weeks, sometimes even a couple months before you see a brother priest,” said Father Robert Fath, vicar general for the diocese. “So, making sure that you have regular contact is one of the things that we’ve done as a diocese to sort of stave off that loneliness.”
“We require all of our priests to come into Fairbanks for clergy days (several times a year). It’s an opportunity for rest and relaxation, fraternity, continuing education, spiritual nourishment, and it gives us an opportunity to check in with our priests to make sure they’re healthy,” he told The Pillar.
“We then also make them go down to Anchorage annually for convocation where all the Archdiocese of Anchorage and Diocese of Fairbanks priests come together.”
Poverty is another major challenge in remote Alaska.
Many of the people living in rural villages survive by hunting, fishing, and gathering berries.
“These are very economically depressed areas of the United States,” Fath said. “Most people live at or below the poverty line.”
“If you look at the national statistics, we have some of the highest rates of drug and alcohol abuse, various forms of physical abuse, suicide, and depression because of those economic struggles.”
But despite their poverty, Radich said, the people of the remote villages of Alaska are profoundly generous.
“These people have taught me how to be a Franciscan,” Radich said. “They have a love of creation, care for the earth, they have a simple joy and simplicity about them, a real respect for everybody. People take the homeless in. They feed them. You feed your family, and you take what’s left over to somebody.”
Receptivity toward the faith varies from village to village. Villages with parish churches are historically Catholic areas, first evangelized by Jesuit missionaries more than 50 years ago.
But with priests visiting only once every few weeks, regular catechesis becomes difficult. A lack of formation opportunities and changing populations have, in some areas, contributed to declines in religious participation.
“We have very few catechists in the villages and so it means that the priest is the primary catechist instead of having a cadre of volunteers to help,” Fath said.
“A lot of the village ministry is really a ministry of relationship. You are visiting people in their homes. You are going fishing with them, you are berry picking, you are meeting them at native Dance or at basketball games at the school, talking to them at the AC store, the grocery store, and getting to know them that way.”
With few priests, the diocese has leaned on deacons to help minister in the villages. Shortly after the Second Vatican Council, the Diocese of Fairbanks became one of the first U.S. dioceses to to reinstitute the permanent diaconate.
The diocese received permission and began two cohorts – an urban program for men living in Fairbanks proper, and the Native deacon program, which sought to promote vocations within tribal villages.
“One of the driving reasons for that was the real need, even back in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, to have trained clergy in the villages,” Fath said. “This was an opportunity for us to raise up men in holy orders who were from those villages, from those cultures, and to have them act as spiritual leaders in the absence of priests.”
In recent years, though, the diocese has struggled with rural diaconate vocations. One of the reasons, Radich said, is a strong sense of cultural humility, in which individuals are not inclined to volunteer for positions of prestige.
“To step forward is not in their culture,” she explained. “Their favorite line is, ‘I’m not worthy.’ It took us a while to keep saying, ‘Who is worthy is not the question, it is a matter of are you called?’ To get them to the idea that they can be called for something has been challenging.”
But the villagers love their priests. They are always excited and grateful to see a priest ride in on a snow machine. They invite the priests to join in hunting trips, fishing excursions, and community feasts called potlaches, which include traditional fare like walrus, seal, and agudak – a dessert fondly known as “Eskimo ice cream,” made by whipping crisco, fresh berries and white fish meat.
“You befriend the people,” Bang said. “They take you to different kinds of events and stuff. They really like their priests, so they will try to take care of you.”
After two years of leading the Diocese of Fairbanks, Bishop Maekawa compared the experience to the early years of establishing the Church in other parts of the United States.
“We don’t have any money to build a church, we don’t have any priests, it is a lot like early evangelization in the lower 48,” he said. “Evangelization in the United States is a remarkable story of evangelical missionary success, because you had immigrant Catholics coming over to the U.S. That story is still being played out here in Alaska.”
Bang said the experience of being out in the Alaskan wilderness is a reminder of the need to rely radically on God’s providence.
“When you go to the bush, you feel like you’re in another country. You just have to trust God out there,” he reflected.
“It’s not really about my pastoral skill, but ultimately it is God and Jesus Christ, and how we celebrate his mystery humbly, but also with all our heart.”
For Aiden, the experience of ministering in rural Alaska has been both beautiful and challenging.
Aiden is no stranger to difficult assignments.
“I worked in an area (of Nigeria) where Boko Haram was strong and was sometimes shooting at us,” he said.
But when his bishop first asked if he would take an assignment in Alaska, he hesitated.
“I said, ‘I can’t live in this place. It’s pure ice. Unless you want to send me on a suicide mission, then no, I don’t want to go and die in a strange land’.”
Ultimately, though, Aiden went to Alaska, despite his uncertainties. And over time, he fell in love with the mission and the people.
“I love ministry in Alaska, and I think it’s a privilege for me to be in this lovely diocese,” he said. “It takes out comfort, you know, so that you do the real thing. There’s no comfort here. This is a very tough place to be. And at the same time, it’s the calmest and the sweetest place to be.”
And Alaska has one thing that Aiden knows he can’t find back in Nigeria – snow machines.
“Snow machines are one of my favorite parts of being up here,” he said. “Rain, dark, sunshine, I don’t care. I will move with speed on my snow machine. That is my best moment. I could ride it a thousand times. I love my snow machines.”
Maekawa often reminds the priests that in the bush, they are living out Christ’s Great Commission in a very real way – and following in the path paved by many faithful priests and laity before them.
“In order to get to where we are in Fairbanks right now, it took centuries, and generations upon generations upon generations of faithful men and women, faithful Catholics to grow the faith, starting in the Holy Land to reach Alaska,” he said.
“To have the Church established here is just a sign of that living body of Christ.”