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Father Vic Subb—Crossett, Arkansas
Celebrating Mass Among the Tomatoes

Father Vic Subb celebrates Mass on a makeshift altar outside the dormitories of Spanish-speaking Arkansas farm workers.

Each June and July, as pastor of the southeast Arkansas Glenmary parishes of Holy Cross in Crossett and Holy Spirit in Hamburg, Father Vic Subb took to the back roads of Ashley and Bradley counties in search of a shed or barracks to celebrate Mass with the Spanish-speaking workers who annually harvest the area’s tomato crop.

Today, Father Vic is ministering in south Georgia, but his Arkansas ministry is continued by Glenmary Fathers Chet Artysiewicz and Neil Pezzulo. What follows is an account by Linda Webster of Sunday Masses among the tomatoes on July 4, 1999. Excerpts reprinted with permission from The Arkansas Catholic.

4:35 p.m.: Father Vic and Aurelio, his Spanish-speaking friend, arrive at the Fountain Hill grocery to meet this reporter. The primary purpose of the ministry is to celebrate Mass for the workers. They cannot get into town on Sunday mornings for Mass, so Father Vic brings the celebration to them.

“They work until around 2 p.m., so I usually try to get out to some of the farms around 4 or 5 p.m. when they have finished their meals,” he explains. “This is my way of bringing the sacraments to them.”

4:55 p.m.: A light-green commercial van full of farm workers is idling at the gas pumps in front of the general store at Johnsville crossroads. Father Vic wheels onto the gravel parking lot. All 10 of the occupants pile out, smiling and shaking hands with “Padre Vic.” While Father Vic catches up on the news with the older workers, a couple of the younger guys point to my camera and ask me to take their photographs.

“They want their families back home in Mexico to see pictures of them in the U.S.,” says Father Vic. “Most of them are very poor and cannot afford cameras or much of anything else. They come up here to work the tomatoes, then the peppers and the chilis if they are lucky. When they go home, most of them don’t have any work except for some handyman employment or hourly seasonal work.”

As we leave the parking lot, Father Vic explains “we’re going to check on the condition of one of the workers who nearly died in the field yesterday. The man collapsed and they called me to say they didn’t think he’d make it, but he’s going to be OK.”

We turn into a dirt driveway and park next to two long workers’ dormitories sided with rusting corrugated metal sheets. Several men come greet Father Vic as he opens the hatch at the back of the van.

“I usually try to bring clothing and other items they need whenever I go out to the farms,” he says, tugging a large cardboard box over the rear seat and onto the deck. “I found this box on my porch this morning, so one of the Holy Cross parishioners must have known I was coming out here today.”

5:40 p.m.: Father Vic pulls off the highway at an enormous packing shed where several dozen men are sitting on boxes and old car seats. “We’ll probably have Mass here,” he says. “I was here last week and they asked me to come back, so we’ll see.”

6:30 p.m.: We have Mass in the packing shed. “Over the last 10 years, I’ve helped about 950 of these men and their families get permanent visas,” Father Vic said. “Everyone we’re visiting today is here legally on a work visa.”

Father Vic robes in a clear space. Flies swirl on everything—tomato pulp on the floor, a bin full of watermelons and crates full of beans still in their jackets. Two men bring in a table and a candle from one of the dorms and a third man distributes bilingual missalettes from the van. The crowd starts small but swells to nearly 180 men by the consecration.

7:30 p.m.: We head into Crossett to a soccer field where several hundred people have asked for Mass after a nine-week tournament’s end.

9 p.m.: Father Vic robes outside a crude plywood building by the light from the kitchen door. Men are gathering in twos and threes, snagging folding chairs from the kitchen and bringing them out into the grass and darkness. Here, on the unmowed grass in front of a communal kitchen, Father Vic preaches on the meaning of independence to men who are living many hundreds of miles from their families, trying to earn enough money during the tomato season to support those families for an entire year.

10 p.m.: Mass is over and the men line up to discuss individual problems with Father Vic.

10:15 p.m.: My headlights glint off Father Vic’s glasses as I back up my car to leave. He waves and continues talking, the darkness closing around him in my rearview mirror.

Glenmary's Crossett mission was turned back to the Diocese of Little Rock in 2003. Father Vic Subb is currently serving in Glenmary's Georgia missions where he continues to reach out to migrant workers.

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