Ganjuran Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

On April 16, 1924, the Dutch brothers Joseph and Julius Schmutzer, sugar-factory owners who had taken the social teaching of Rerum Novarum to heart with schools and a hospital for their Javanese workers, founded a church on their land south of Yogyakarta. What grew here is one of the world's most beautiful inculturations of the Gospel: beside the church stands a ten-meter candi, a temple in the style of nearby Prambanan, where Christ is enthroned as a Javanese king carved with batik patterns, and Mary appears as a Javanese mother. Pilgrims climb its steps barefoot with flowers and incense in the Javanese manner, Mass is celebrated in Javanese with gamelan, and the faithful bathe in the spring that rises beneath the temple, telling of healings received. From twenty-five Catholics in 1922 the parish has grown into the thousands, its second pastor became Indonesia's first native bishop, and when an earthquake destroyed the church in 2006, the candi stood, and the people rebuilt.