Abstract
In the years directly following the Second Vatican Council under the guidance of its second bishop Mons. Enrique Pelach i Feliu, the Andean diocese of Abancay—founded in 1959 in one of the most rural and most indigenous areas of Peru—experienced the founding of a new seminary intended to train a new generation of native clergy, and a concerted clerical effort to revive and promote the Marian pilgrimage of the Virgin of Cocharcas. The former meant the advent of a generation of native clergy made up of men born and raised in rural farming families in Abancay and native speakers of Quechua, the local indigenous language, which transformed the relationship between the institutional Church and indigenous Catholics from one rooted in antipathy and hostility to one based in a shared cultural background and language. The latter meant the elevation of the indigenous figure of Sebastian Quimichu as exemplar of both Andean Catholic faith and practice for his role in founding the Marian shrine of Cocharcas, and the legitimisation of popular Andean Catholic practices that had previously been stigmatised. This article provides a dual historical and ethnographic account of these events, and in doing so demonstrates the profound transformation of rural Andean lived religion and practice in the years following Vatican II.
Highlights
Cardinal Joseph Suenens famously called Vatican II the “French revolution in the Church”, and the reforms of the Council are often framed as a revolution, with emphasis made on the stunning and drastic changes that they effected in the global Roman
This article focuses on the long-term pastoral effects—especially, for rural Andean Catholic parishioners—of the actions of Monsignor (Mons.) Enrique
He speaks of how “Our Lady wanted to be present in this land of Apurimac” (1972: 8) and that is why only a scant century after the initial evangelization, God had called upon a “poor and simple Indian” (1972: 8) to make this possible. He locates the discussion in his 1972 volume within the context of the Council. He follows his assertion that “to read the story of Sebastian Quimichi and the trials which the image of the Virgin of Cocharcas faced, until we were able to be in her spectacular sanctuary, makes us realize that there was special providence from God, so that we could have this venerated image in Apurímac, influencing our Christian faith just as it influenced the faith of so many generations” (1972: 44), with a lengthy quotation from a homily given by Paul VI in February 1965 where he had spoken in favor of the veneration of Mary
Summary
Cardinal Joseph Suenens famously called Vatican II the “French revolution in the Church”, and the reforms of the Council are often framed as a revolution, with emphasis made on the stunning and drastic changes that they effected in the global Roman. In writing about the changes in Andean pastoral experience of the institutional Church in the decades directly following the closure of the Council, the following article examines a diocese that, crucially, first, is overwhelmingly Catholic; second, is predominantly poor, rural, and indigenous; and third, suffered immense trauma and violence and the virtual cessation of public ceremonial life for two decades as a result of the Peruvian internal conflict. As of 1993, 50% of houses in Apurímac had dirt floors, and 90% were built from adobe—a material that is considered to be inferior and low-prestige, and acts as a reliable indicator of poverty It is an overwhelmingly Quechua-speaking area: Peruvian census data for 1993 records that nearly 80% of the population had the indigenous language Quechua as their mother tongue; native Spanish speakers made up only 20%.1. Andean Catholic pilgrimage of Our Lady of Cocharcas, which attracts thousands of pilgrims from all over the surrounding countryside every year
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