Word: priestly
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Within a few minutes the padre entered from a door to the right, accompanied by a strong-bodied assistant whose thin, darkish face showed him to be a resident of the town. The Catholic priest was white, a Maryknoll missionary who had lived in the village for almost 10 years. From a small speaker on the wall an organ version of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" was playing. As the padre walked to the modest altar, his assistant passed out to the peasants sheets with prayers written in Quechua. This service was for those who spoke only that Indian tongue...
Luis Bunuel's EI, Thursday, February 28, 7:30 p.m.; Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, Sunday, March...
...didn't look like the wan, grey-haired, dark-eyed priest I'd expected to encounter. He would have looked more appropriate sitting in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium, a hot dog in one hand and a cold beer in the other. More than his red fleshy nose, more than his lethargic eyes, more than the deep clean wrinkles on his receding hairline, it was his hat that made him appear so unecclesiastical. It was the type of hat that one expects to find on a cigar-smoking bookie or on someone who scalps tickets at a football game...
...next day. After a few minutes there was a knock at the door, and a campesino walked in, hat in hand and shoulders bent over in what looked almost like a caricature of humility. "Padre, por favor, pudiera venir al cementerio, para rezar por nuestro companero?" So the priest, his face impassive, put on his black vestment, and we were off to the cemetery to say some prayers over the body of a campesino awaiting burial...
...just outside the gate of the cemetery, we were met by a couple of campesinos, one of whom carried a heavy earthen jug on his back. "Ah, padre, padre, un vaso, por favor." Father, father, one glass, please, they said excitedly as they pressed around the priest. I began to understand what was going on, and so I tried to move off to the side, where I hoped I would not be noticed. Padre Ray had little choice. The campesino with the urn, his face dirty from the day's sweat, eagerly swung the container off his back and took...