Photos: Deep in Peru’s Amazon a priest tends to the forest’s illegal miners | Hindustan Times
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Photos: Deep in Peru’s Amazon a priest tends to the forest’s illegal miners

Updated On Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

As the Pope made a visit to Peru last week urging for restraint and conscientious use of the Amazon to maintain its delicate ecosystem, Pablo Zabala, a Spanish priest in the nation’s Amazonian corridor tends to illegal miners and sex-workers lured work that threatens the rainforest but provides livelihood.

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Below a canopy of trees in the Peruvian Amazon, drunken miners carry in the casket of a man whose search for gold ended with a bullet in his stomach. 70-year-old Spanish Reverend Pablo Zabala presides over the funeral, singing as the coffin is lowered into the dirt in a cemetery where the graves of about 50 other illegal miners are marked with plain black crosses. (Franklin Briceno / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Below a canopy of trees in the Peruvian Amazon, drunken miners carry in the casket of a man whose search for gold ended with a bullet in his stomach. 70-year-old Spanish Reverend Pablo Zabala presides over the funeral, singing as the coffin is lowered into the dirt in a cemetery where the graves of about 50 other illegal miners are marked with plain black crosses. (Franklin Briceno / AP)

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Pablo Zabala, better known as Padre Pablo, wields his machete while harvesting bananas on land owned by the Catholic Church in Boca Colorado in the Amazon. Zabala has lived in the Amazon for 24 years and spent the last 10 running a Catholic parish that works with about two dozen mining camps. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Pablo Zabala, better known as Padre Pablo, wields his machete while harvesting bananas on land owned by the Catholic Church in Boca Colorado in the Amazon. Zabala has lived in the Amazon for 24 years and spent the last 10 running a Catholic parish that works with about two dozen mining camps. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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Pablo’s congregation celebrates Mass in candlelight during a power outage. He tends to some of the rainforest’s most hapless souls. Men from poor villages who scour mercury-laced rivers for gold, women who sell their bodies in the brothels near illegal mining camps and people like Juan Peralta, who was shot dead in a dispute with an indigenous tribe with no relatives to mourn him. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Pablo’s congregation celebrates Mass in candlelight during a power outage. He tends to some of the rainforest’s most hapless souls. Men from poor villages who scour mercury-laced rivers for gold, women who sell their bodies in the brothels near illegal mining camps and people like Juan Peralta, who was shot dead in a dispute with an indigenous tribe with no relatives to mourn him. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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It’s near this corner of the Amazon that Pope Francis visited Friday, amid what has been called a modern-day gold rush threatening the world’s largest rainforest. Mercury used by the miners to unearth small specks of gold has contaminated streams and rivers. New roads have been hacked into the rainforest and loggers have slashed away swaths of the delicate ecosystem. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

It’s near this corner of the Amazon that Pope Francis visited Friday, amid what has been called a modern-day gold rush threatening the world’s largest rainforest. Mercury used by the miners to unearth small specks of gold has contaminated streams and rivers. New roads have been hacked into the rainforest and loggers have slashed away swaths of the delicate ecosystem. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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Pablo Zabala, drinks a beer at the Nectar del Olvido bar, invited by men accompanied by sex-workers. When the 70-year-old Spanish priest accepted the mission in the forlorn corner of the Amazon he was warned by fellow clergy that the region was “like Sodom and Gomorrah.” “God is in all parts,” he remembers telling his colleagues. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Pablo Zabala, drinks a beer at the Nectar del Olvido bar, invited by men accompanied by sex-workers. When the 70-year-old Spanish priest accepted the mission in the forlorn corner of the Amazon he was warned by fellow clergy that the region was “like Sodom and Gomorrah.” “God is in all parts,” he remembers telling his colleagues. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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A client sits passed out at the Nectar del Olvido bar. Zabala says his congregation of miners is unlikely to welcome Pope Francis’ message on protecting the Amazon. Francis likened the rainforest to one of the “lungs of our planet” that must be preserved. “It’s easy to talk from Lima or Rome,” said Zabala, a biology graduate who turned to the church. “But what will these people eat if they’re kicked out?” (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

A client sits passed out at the Nectar del Olvido bar. Zabala says his congregation of miners is unlikely to welcome Pope Francis’ message on protecting the Amazon. Francis likened the rainforest to one of the “lungs of our planet” that must be preserved. “It’s easy to talk from Lima or Rome,” said Zabala, a biology graduate who turned to the church. “But what will these people eat if they’re kicked out?” (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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Pablo Zabala, walks to the Barrio Chino bar to return a statue of a saint, adopted by the local sex workers as their patron, that he volunteered to clean. He cuts an eccentric figure dressed in light pajamas and says he had long felt compelled to work not just with the righteous, but with the sinners, and connect with “the life of the common people.” (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Pablo Zabala, walks to the Barrio Chino bar to return a statue of a saint, adopted by the local sex workers as their patron, that he volunteered to clean. He cuts an eccentric figure dressed in light pajamas and says he had long felt compelled to work not just with the righteous, but with the sinners, and connect with “the life of the common people.” (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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Padre Pablo, sits underneath bunches of bananas he has harvested, while feeding a flock of chickens. Sometimes the miners call him late into the night, haunted by images of friends buried alive under piles of collapsed sand or killed in river canoe accidents. “He’s there for the difficult moments,” said Juana Roque, 34, who lives in a mining camp with her husband and two children. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Padre Pablo, sits underneath bunches of bananas he has harvested, while feeding a flock of chickens. Sometimes the miners call him late into the night, haunted by images of friends buried alive under piles of collapsed sand or killed in river canoe accidents. “He’s there for the difficult moments,” said Juana Roque, 34, who lives in a mining camp with her husband and two children. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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Parishioner Lucero Fatima Cusi embraces Father Pablo Zabala in Boca Colorado. Small-scale miners like the ones Zabala comforts are a major driver of the colonization that fuels the forest degradation and pollutes the rivers. But in spite of Zabala’s work, Pope Francis is not a popular figure among the miners who associate him with their enemies: ecologists. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Parishioner Lucero Fatima Cusi embraces Father Pablo Zabala in Boca Colorado. Small-scale miners like the ones Zabala comforts are a major driver of the colonization that fuels the forest degradation and pollutes the rivers. But in spite of Zabala’s work, Pope Francis is not a popular figure among the miners who associate him with their enemies: ecologists. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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Father Pablo Zabala chats with workers offloading bricks on the Inambari River, in Puerto Carlos. Indigenous leaders who met Francis on Friday hope he will push Peru’s government to grant them formal land rights and clean up the polluted rivers miners have left in their wake. Zabala said that for the 85,000 families who survive by mining gold in the Amazon the problem of poverty and limited opportunities takes priority. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Father Pablo Zabala chats with workers offloading bricks on the Inambari River, in Puerto Carlos. Indigenous leaders who met Francis on Friday hope he will push Peru’s government to grant them formal land rights and clean up the polluted rivers miners have left in their wake. Zabala said that for the 85,000 families who survive by mining gold in the Amazon the problem of poverty and limited opportunities takes priority. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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Zabala celebrates a private Mass for the Aguilar family in Boca Colorado. Many of the men and women who dig for precious metals have few other means and feel they have a more legitimate right to the Amazon’s riches than the multinational corporations also digging in. “They feel the encyclical (the Pope’s formal letter) was not created for here, but for another world,” he says. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Zabala celebrates a private Mass for the Aguilar family in Boca Colorado. Many of the men and women who dig for precious metals have few other means and feel they have a more legitimate right to the Amazon’s riches than the multinational corporations also digging in. “They feel the encyclical (the Pope’s formal letter) was not created for here, but for another world,” he says. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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Pablo Zabala makes his way through the jungle under heavy rain to the rural home of a parishioner. After 10 years of service here, the Spanish priest has been transferred 130 kms (80 miles) away to Puerto Maldonado, known as the gateway to the Amazon jungle. (Rodrigo Abd / AP) expand-icon View Photos in a new improved layout
Updated on Jan 22, 2018 02:48 PM IST

Pablo Zabala makes his way through the jungle under heavy rain to the rural home of a parishioner. After 10 years of service here, the Spanish priest has been transferred 130 kms (80 miles) away to Puerto Maldonado, known as the gateway to the Amazon jungle. (Rodrigo Abd / AP)

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