{"id":3863,"date":"2006-12-19T08:28:25","date_gmt":"2006-12-19T08:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html"},"modified":"2006-12-19T08:28:25","modified_gmt":"2006-12-19T08:28:25","slug":"servants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html","title":{"rendered":"Servants"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American bishop of a Bolivian vicarate reflects on the challenges of his ministry, and the profound needs of the people whom he serves.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

For Bishop Morgan Casey, pastoral visits can mean long hours bouncing over rutted dirt roads or chugging along a muddy river on a motorboat to one of more than 300 tiny communities scattered throughout the lush rain forest.<\/p>\n

"We’re an alive church. We’re a church that’s trying to address social problems," Bishop Casey said of the Apostolic Vicariate of Pando, whose six parishes serve about 160,000 people in an area of Bolivia nearly the size of Oregon.<\/p>\n

Social problems are acute in this hot, humid corner of the poorest country in South America. Nearly three-quarters of the people in the vicariate live below the poverty line, and about one-third of town residents and half of those in rural areas live in extreme poverty, with an income of $1 or less a day.<\/p>\n

The vicariate is a tropical frontier area on the border between Bolivia and Brazil. Riberalta, where the vicariate office and the cathedral are located, is difficult to reach by road from the highlands, especially when seasonal rains churn the red clay roads to mud. As a result, there are very few cars in town. Most people get around on bicycles or motorcycles. Taking a taxi means balancing on the back of a motorbike.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American bishop of a Bolivian vicarate reflects on the challenges of his ministry, and the profound needs of the people whom he serves. For Bishop Morgan Casey, pastoral visits can mean long hours bouncing over rutted dirt roads or chugging along a muddy river on a motorboat to one of more than 300 tiny…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nServants - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Servants - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The American bishop of a Bolivian vicarate reflects on the challenges of his ministry, and the profound needs of the people whom he serves. For Bishop Morgan Casey, pastoral visits can mean long hours bouncing over rutted dirt roads or chugging along a muddy river on a motorboat to one of more than 300 tiny…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-19T08:28:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Servants - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Servants - Via Media","og_description":"The American bishop of a Bolivian vicarate reflects on the challenges of his ministry, and the profound needs of the people whom he serves. For Bishop Morgan Casey, pastoral visits can mean long hours bouncing over rutted dirt roads or chugging along a muddy river on a motorboat to one of more than 300 tiny…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-12-19T08:28:25+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html","name":"Servants - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-12-19T08:28:25+00:00","dateModified":"2006-12-19T08:28:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/servants.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Servants"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}