The Rev. Christian Villagomeza ministers to the seafarers whose steel cathedrals take them all over the world, and into the Port of Tampa. He visits. He listens. He shares dinner. He offers Holy Communion. For some he is like family, if only for a day.
By BRADY DENNIS
Published December 24, 2003
[Times photos: Chris Zuppa]
"I have to have a passion to do this," Christian Villagomeza says as he drives to the Port of Tampa.
Tampa Port Ministries chaplain Christian Villagomeza carries his vestments and the elements of Holy Communion to the Stoikos, a ship that docked at the Port of Tampa recently. Villagomeza ministers to sailors who arrive at the port.
[credit]
Villagomeza celebrates Mass with sailors aboard the Stoikos recently. The cargo ship, loaded with phosphate, was going to travel on to China.
TAMPA - It's nearly 3 p.m. when the priest strides up the dock toward the cargo ship at berth 4146. Wind-carved faces peer down at him from the massive deck above.
He knows he is a stranger. Always the stranger. But he smiles and calls up to them, his congregation for the day.
"Shore passes?"
They shake their heads. "No."
So he climbs the 37 stairs to the Stoikos, like a salesman making a cold call. The ship is registered in Panama and carrying phosphate. It has just come from Barcelona, Spain, headed shortly for China.
Several of the crew members are Greek. Like many seamen and like the priest himself, most are Filipino. Almost all have children in faraway places. The men wear grease-stained coveralls and smoke Marlboros under a nearby No Smoking sign.
He greets them like old friends, asks their problems, shares jokes. He wears no clerical collar - he doesn't want to be treated with reverence - only a Benedictine cross around his neck. He says nothing of God, nothing of sin or redemption. He knows most of their needs are far more earthbound.
The men start to smile. The suspicion disappears from their gaze. They warm to him.
Most do not have visas. They must stay on the ship, their view of America limited to dreary grain elevators and endless CSX railroad cars on one side, the skyline of downtown Tampa on the other.
The priest slips through a bulkhead door, past the mess hall and into the galley. Men slice onions, peppers and half-ripe tomatoes. They boil potatoes.
He jokes with them, partly in English, partly in Tagalog, the language of the Philippines. He offers them use of a cell phone and a stack of cheap phone cards, both priceless to men who live at sea.
He agrees to take two men with visas to Wal-Mart later. They will ship out soon.
Before the chaplain can leave to check on other ships at the Port of Tampa, the chief cook, the man they call El Mayor, pulls him aside.
In Tagalog, he asks the priest to return later and perform a Mass on the ship. They will spend Christmas at sea, he says, and could use the blessing.
The priest nods and replies in their native language. Of course, he says.
* * *
The Rev. Christian Villagomeza is a small man, maybe 5 foot 6, with dark brown eyes and an easy smile. Only the flecks of gray in his dark hair and mustache hint at his 45 years.
Villagomeza, who answers to "Father Christian," has been a priest since 1982. He moved to Tampa in 1987. He and his wife, who have three children, came because the weather resembled their native Philippines. At home he plays guitar - Jim Croce, the Eagles, the Rolling Stones. He listens to jazz and teaches tae kwon do on Tuesdays.
On Sundays he preaches to 80 or so members at St. Chad's Episcopal Church, a small stucco building in the middle of a working-class neighborhood north of Hillsborough Avenue.
His congregation is mostly white and middle class. He knows they come because they are believers and want to worship. Not so at the port. His ever-changing congregation here is a procession of races, nationalities, languages and beliefs. Some want nothing to do with religion.
But devotion draws him each week to the Port of Tampa to help the seafarers who pass through. Unlike those in his regular congregation, most he will never see again. But he sympathizes with their loneliness and their struggles, though he has never spent time at sea himself.
Father Christian speaks seven dialects of Tagalog, some Japanese, some Russian, some Indian, some Korean, some Indonesian. He can say at least "hello" in dozens of languages. He says he can never learn enough tongues.
Already a priest, he first visited the port in 1995 to pick up his brother-in-law, a seaman. He saw groups of men bundled against the cold, waiting in long lines to use a pay phone. He decided they needed help.
He spent a year training as a port chaplain at the Port of Newark, N.J. Upon returning, he started the International Seafarers Mission of Tampa Bay in 1998. For decades, a Christian mission at the port has invited seafarers to church on Sundays. But Father Christian wanted to do more.
He knew life at sea was gritty - constant solitude, broken families, loved ones far away. He knew the port brought business but no one who cared for the men's personal needs.
So Father Christian began carting the seafarers to Wal-Mart, helping them with legal matters, making sure they got paid, handing them phone cards so they could call home.
He prays with them, counsels them and holds church services, but only when they ask. Otherwise, he just listens and tries to keep them smiling.
"That, I believe, is the core of this ministry," he says. "Helping out is what satisfies me, even if they don't mention anything about religion. I don't put religion in your throat. It's not my style."
His idea has grown.
In June, the mission moved into the port's former maintenance building, a yellow cement block structure near piles of salt waiting for shipment. The building, like nearly everything inside, was donated. The center has become a YMCA of sorts for the seamen.
Inside are computers with Internet access, a room with 40 phones, a large TV, ping pong tables, couches, chairs, a basketball goal and at least six Christmas trees. Seaman can get clothes here, or toiletries, or books, or food, or Christian literature in nearly any language. There are plans for a chapel and a small grocery.
Four pastors now regularly work at the center. Each day they receive a list of ships in port, with names like Orion, Poseidon, Clipper Fiesta and Coastal Boca Grande.
The pastors and volunteers pore over the list and divvy it up. They let almost no ship head to sea before a chaplain has set foot on deck.
* * *
Father Christian's day passes in a flurry.
He treks to his church off Hillsborough Avenue to gather his robe, two candles, Communion wine and wafers for the Mass. He heads back to the Stoikos and shares a 6 p.m. dinner of white rice, salad, baked chicken, potatoes, Australian beef and moussaka, a Greek casserole.
After dinner he steps out to the deck, where a Filipino engineer waits to go to Wal-Mart. The man teases a Greek engineer who takes too long to get ready.
"Parang babae kung kumilos, baka naglalagay pa ng make-up," he says in Tagalog. He is like a woman, putting on her makeup.
Father Christian laughs.
He drives the two men to the Wal-Mart in Brandon, passing homes hung with holiday lights, Subway shops and convenience stores - the everyday scenes of life on land. The seamen peer out the windows, half interested.
He drops them in front of the bustling store just before 7 p.m. They carry wish lists from the crew members who are stuck on the ship - towels, soap, shampoo. He'll be back at 9:29, he tells them.
"If I said 9:30, they would not remember," he says.
Back at the ship, the crew has spread a white cloth across one of the three tables in the mess. Father Christian dresses in his white robe and purple sash. A dozen men, all Filipino, crowd into the small room for the Mass.
They listen solemnly and recite Catholic prayers from memory. Father Christian, his words drowned by a humming exhaust fan, recalls the Gospel story of Jesus calming a violent storm on the Sea of Galilee.
He offers prayers for their families abroad, for the safety of the ship, for the captain and officers during the monthlong trip to China, for the lonely Christmas ahead. He shakes each man's hand, then offers Communion.
One by one, they take a wafer, dip it in wine and sit back down. Several make the sign of the cross on their chests. Several bow in prayer. One man looks straight ahead, crying.
The service lasts only 25 minutes. The men pass a small envelope and collect $39. The priest thanks them, slips his robe off and starts out the door. The chief cook, El Mayor, stops Father Christian on the way out.
"Thank you for bringing the Lord here tonight," he says.
* * *
It's past 10 p.m. now, and Father Christian has picked up the two men at Wal-Mart, gone on another phone card run and returned to the seafarers center. Two other pastors there tell him of their night.
They held a service for 19 men aboard an Indian ship at berth 256, sang Christmas carols and handed out gifts. The night before, they'd done the same on a Chinese ship. Several seamen are checking e-mail and using the phones, but the pastors will close the center soon.
Father Christian could turn for home.
But something tugs him back to the Stoikos, a feeling that work remains undone. Once there, he asks El Mayor for a cup of coffee. His real name is Bienvenido Majadas. He is 57. The two men sit at a red and white checkered table in the empty mess hall.
Majadas talks of the ports he loves, particularly Brazil. "The women there say Filipinos are easy to fall in love with," he says, smiling.
They trade jokes. Father Christian tells a racy one, for a priest. "The good secretary says, "Good morning, sir.' The bad secretary says, "Wake up, it's already morning, sir.' "
El Mayor laughs loudly. Then the smile falls from his face, and he looks down at the table. Father Christian says nothing. He knows El Mayor carries a burden. He has been waiting for this moment.
Majadas says he has not been home in more than a year. He misses his children and grandchildren in the Philippines.
He tells how his first wife died of leukemia. He says he suspects his second wife of cheating on him. She lives in Sacramento now. He still calls, but he no longer loves her.
"Deep inside, I have no feeling anymore," he tells the priest he has known only an afternoon.
"It's okay," Father Christian says. "You will get through it."
He asks whether Majadas has any friends on board. Majadas shakes his head.
"We are workmates," he says.
Father Christian offers a few words of encouragement, then stands to go. They shake hands. It is nearly 11 p.m.
"Did a good deed tonight," he says on his way out. "If I don't stay long enough to listen, the day is not complete."
He steps into the cold, clear, windy night and spots two crew members. He had taken one to Wal-Mart. The other had attended Mass.
They are standing on deck with a woman wearing black high heels. She will not look at the priest. Father Christian knows she almost certainly is a prostitute.
He wishes the men well and walks down the dock without looking back.
"In every port, there is always this," he says. "That is their life. I cannot judge that."
He drives away, leaving the seafarers there with the high-heeled woman and the ocean ahead of them, and the lights of downtown Tampa sparkling in the distance.
