Word: navajos
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Into the packed plaza three Navajos rode, chanting the ancient Riding Song of the tribe. Behind them rolled a sleek black limousine bearing Archbishop Byrne of Santa Fe and Bishop Espelage of Gallup. Bishop Espelage celebrated Mass, the Navajo children's choir singing the responses. Then the Indians hunched forward expectantly. Old Father Berard was going to speak...
Among his colleagues, Father Berard's erudition (he has written 17 scientific works on the Indians) earned him the title "Scholar to the Navajo." but his Indian flock affectionately called him "Yazzie" (Shortie). For decades he traveled the barren reservation by buckboard and horseback, preaching and studying and helping St. Michael's build up a network of schools, clinics and churches to care for some 11,500 baptized Catholics...
...thin, white-haired Father Berard, 75, was escorted to the microphone, young Franciscans in the first two rows of camp chairs cocked their ears to catch his words; from under a dozen brown habits cameras appeared. For half an hour, under a blazing sun, Father Berard spoke in Navajo of the mission's history and the meaning of the faith...
...Navajo, but the priests have a religion for all men, white or red or black . . . The Ten Commandments are a ladder which you climb in this life to live with God in heaven. If you don't, you won't find anything except a mess in the hereafter...
Later there was a formal dinner for the clergy in the Community House, but Father Berard slipped away as soon as he could to join the big Navajo feast outdoors. While the Indians gulped boiled mutton, pinto beans and coffee, Yazzie moved from group to group, pinching chubby brown cheeks of babies in cradle boards, gossiping with oldsters about tribal affairs. Said one Navajo patriarch: "The Long Robes are all heart, but Long Robe Yazzie is a heart and a head...