San Jacinto California, USA — Father Earl Henley, who heads the Native American Ministry for the Diocese of San Bernardino, stands outside his one-bedroom home next to St. Joseph's Catholic Church on the Soboba Reservation. On Sundays, the pews at reservation churches are rarely full. Wedding bells almost never ring. Confessions are seldom uttered. “I don’t have 1,500 people to say Mass for,” said the 69-year-old Henley.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times
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San Jacinto California, USA — Henley performs a blessing during Mass at St. Joseph's.The Native American Ministry includes 15 tribes, most tended by other priests and sisters. Henley regularly visits five.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times
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San Jacinto California, USA — Henley shakes hands with parishioners after Mass. His territory is vast. On Sundays, he can be found behind the wheel of his Toyota 4x4 pickup, driving dusty roads near Coachella Valley date orchards or navigating the steep mountain passes into Anza’s high desert.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times
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San Jacinto California, USA — Henley leads St. Joseph's parishioners in prayer. He talks of taking a sabbatical to reassess his mission. He wants to live on the reservations, insert himself into the daily routines, as he once did as a missionary in Papua New Guinea.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times
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Anza California, USA — Arionna Ward, 4, looks out through the open doors of the St. Rose of Lima Chapel during Easter Mass. Founded in 1878, the chapel is on the Santa Rosa Reservation, which remains the most impoverished of the ones Henley oversees.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times
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Anza California, USA — After conducting Easter Mass, Henley shakes the hands of departing perishoners at Our Lady of the Snows Chapel on the Cahuilla Reservation. "You can’t have a priest who comes in saying he will straighten out the Indians, because he will be destroyed and he will destroy whatever has been planted here,’’ Henley said. “So you come with a missionary vision. That means hang out and listen. You have to have the patience of Job.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times
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Anza California, USA — Henley stands outside the St. Rose of Lima Chapel on the Santa Rosa Reservation. Born in Louisville, Henley describes himself as a “city slicker at heart.’’ He said he felt the “calling” to become a missionary when he was a 16-year-old sophomore at a boys high school run by the Xaverian Brothers.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times
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ANZA California, USA — An elder of the Cahuilla tribe, 78-year-old Annie Hamilton recalls being taken by Catholic missionaries to St. Boniface boarding school in Banning, where she and other Indian children were forced to abandon their tribal ways. She remembers scrubbing floors and hand-washing dishes in scalding water. “They hit us with rulers so we wouldn’t talk our language,” she said.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times
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