ON A MISSION
Remsen native finds home as missionary in Philippines

By KARA KOCZUR, Globe staff reporter
June 12, 2008

REMSEN - He has two homes and two families. There is the place and people of his childhood, and then there's the place and people of the Philippines, where Father Loyd Fiedler, SVD, has spent his last 37 years as a missionary priest.

"They become like your family" said Father Fiedler, 64. "You left behind one family, though not totally forgotten, and now you have this new family."

Father Fiedler has been back visiting his hometowns of Oyens and Remsen since April. He is a Divine Word Missionary priest, which is an international congregation. He first thought about being a missionary in grade school, when a Divine Word Missionary vocations director spoke at his school.

"I kind of liked the idea and secretly took a card he passed around for a vocation club and just joined it," Father Fiedler said. "I started writing and had conversation back and forth. But actually I'm interested in other cultures and languages."

After completing his seminary education in the states, he left for the Philippines in September 1971. The first thing he did after a week in the country, he said, was go to language school to learn Tagalog, also known as Filipino. While it is the national language, it is one of about 75 languages spoken on the 7,007 islands that comprise the country.

He lives on the island of Mindoro and has been at his current mission of Aurora for two years. This is the tenth place he has been assigned to. While he is still making a census, he estimates there are 8,000-10,000 Catholics in his mission, which is made up of 22 communities scattered in rural areas.

Father Fiedler's role as a missionary priest is to be a pastor, he said. The bishop of the island will ask him to go into new areas where people have not had access to a priest and to revive the faith. Normally a missionary priest will go around once a month to the communities in his mission.

"This place has not been taken care of for quite a long time, so I'm kind of going back and getting these people to come for baptism and marriage," he said, adding he does 150 baptisms a year. "I go around twice a month because they've been waiting for a priest for a number of years and have not had the benefits of the sacraments. So I doubled the dosage and a number are coming back."

During his time back in the diocese, he has given presentations about his missionary experiences to students at the Catholic schools in Oyens, Remsen, Le Mars, Alton and Granville.

"One thing they're always surprised about here when I talk about life [in the Philippines], is that in the public school they have regular monthly Masses and confessions," he said.

It is also mandated that there is religious instruction in the public schools, he added. The Philippines is 85 percent Catholic.

"Their religion is not hidden, not like in the states where you have everything in your home or in the church," Father Fiedler said. "But there you see signs everywhere, in the transportation, public and private. In the government offices you have statues and crosses [and] even have Mass in the offices."

While there has been more influence by the West, especially America, the people remain rooted in their Asian culture in their customs and closeness of family life, he said. Families are large, with 600 people being the size of an ordinary family, which means cousins and second cousins are considered like brothers and sisters, he added.

Homes are very simple in the rural area where he works. Houses often have thatched roofs and use native materials, such as bamboo and coconut bark, in their construction. Many of the people he serves work farming coconuts, bananas or rice, though some are teachers and others go into town to work.

There are many challenges he faces in his work. For example, 10 of his communities don't have chapels, while the roof of the chapel in the main station where he lives is full of termites. He also uses his own salary to pay his three catechists, as they need to support their families and send their children to school.

He is looking forward to returning on June 28. While he is gone, his mission doesn't have a resident pastor. It relies on a fellow Divine Word Missionary priest to consecrate extra hosts at the main station so that three ministers can travel to the communities to distribute the Eucharist.

After almost four decades in the Philippines, Father Fiedler has opened up communities, a parish, a Catholic grade school and high school and even a retreat center. He finds satisfaction knowing he has been able to help families send their children to school, so that they can then help their own brothers and sisters.

"You find fulfillment in the work because it's your vocation," he said. "Like it says in the Bible, 'You left behind your father, mother, brothers and sisters, but then you gain one hundredfold.' So you gain many fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters over there."