Chiloé’s Wooden Churches Remain Beacons Amid Growing Conservation Challenges
CHILOÉ, Chile — The wooden churches of Chiloé stand as a landmark of this archipelago in this southern Latin American nation. Built in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century, they survive amid restoration challenges and fewer faithful attending Mass.
In 2000, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization declared 16 of these churches as World Heritage Sites. This represents only 10% of the 152 churches listed in 2021 in Chiloé and neighboring communes. All of them belong to the Chilote School of Religious Architecture in Wood.
“The churches were and continue to be the center of social life in many towns,” said Natalia Cruz, executive director of the Heritage Churches of Chiloé Foundation, which manages the temples declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites. “They can be seen from land and sea. They are a beacon for navigation.”
Restoration challenges arise daily. Floors, ceilings and towers succumb to humidity. In addition, there are bats and wood-eating insects that damage the structure. The foundation spent $11,000 to eliminate bats from the Rilán Church, said Cruz. Now it needs $500,000 to restore the floor of the Ichuac Church.
In 2024, the foundation received some $250,000 in public funds and some $98,000 in donations, mainly from the Ibáñez Atkinson Foundation, said Cruz. “We need more than five times what we receive from the government,” she added.
Churches outside the UNESCO category rely on the communities they serve to sustain themselves. To restore their churches, communities organize mingas, a rural tradition that involves neighbors collaborating on a joint task. Some provide the materials, some food and others money.
A look at the altar of Church of San Antonio de Colo. (Photo by Graciela Ibáñez)
Church construction began with the arrival of Spanish settlers in the 16th century. During this period, the first religious orders, the Franciscans and Mercedarians, began evangelizing the Indigenous population. The Spanish Jesuits, who settled in 1608, implemented the system of circular missions, which consisted of groups of missionaries who made annual tours of the archipelago, staying for a couple of days at various locations.
These visits gave rise to the first chapels, built jointly by the missionaries and the community of faithful, who contributed their labor and construction materials. The carpenters who built the churches were the same ones who built fishing boats.
With the arrival of Jesuits from Bavaria and Hungary, these small chapels gave way to large, lasting buildings. The oldest surviving church is Santa María de Loreto in the town of Achao. Built in the 1730s, it’s the oldest wooden construction in Chile. With a Baroque interior style, its main vault, altars, niches, and pulpit are adorned with colorful wood carvings. The church has undergone several restoration processes, one of the most recent carried out in the late 1990s.
“The temples are a product of popular religiosity. They show what community cohesion is like,” said Father Luis Neum, 67, who was born in the town of Quellón, in southern Chiloé. “The missionaries brought the idea, and the Chilotes made it a reality. There was no marble such as existed in Europe, so they imitated it with paint.” Neum has been parish priest of several churches in the archipelago.
After the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Spanish Crown in 1767, the Franciscans, who had been in Chiloé since 1568, continued the work of evangelism. The newest church declared a World Heritage Site dates from the early 20th century. San Francisco of Castro was built on the same site where other churches had burned down. It’s the archipelago's main temple. The original design was based on stones and bricks as a means of preventing destruction from another fire.
Given the lack of quarries, local carpenters decided to build it following the Chilote tradition: with native wood. The Milanese architect and Franciscan priest Edoardo Provasoli designed the temple in the neo-Gothic style, fashionable at the time. Salvador Calixto Sierpe led the carpenters who built it.
The Church of San Francisco de Castro. (Photo by Graciela Ibáñez)
Today, churches feel the decline of the faithful. In Tenaún, Rosa Ortiz Huenchur, 72, welcomes visitors. She was hired to open the church. A priest from Dalcahue, a town 22 miles (36 kilometers) to the west, comes to celebrate Mass two Sundays a month, she said, adding that about 15 people attend the service. Most of Tenaún’s inhabitants are fishermen and farmers. An aging population and teenagers migrating to larger towns for senior school and college have led to a shift in the church's congregation.
When the church’s patron saint is celebrated, an avalanche of faithful arrive at the temple. In the town of Quinchao, the church receives more than 1,000 people for the feast of Our Lady of Grace every Dec. 8, said Mónica Chamia, 57, a native of the area.
The Ibáñez Atkinson Foundation began funding lighting projects for the churches and, more recently, the opening of the houses of worship from Tuesdays to Sundays to keep them alive. Between November and April, the 16 churches declared World Heritage Sites received some 214,000 visitors, said Daniela del Valle, the foundation’s general manager.
Opening six days a week was part of a pilot project that ended in April. With the data collected by the hosts of the churches, the Heritage Churches of Chiloé Foundation will be able to apply for public funds to continue the project, del Valle said. Churches remained closed most days before the project started.
The value of the Chiloé temples lies in the fact that they constitute one of the oldest heritage sites of wooden churches in the world, said Cristián León, an architect and architecture history professor who teaches at the San Sebastián University in Santiago.
For Chilotes, churches are part of their lives. They were baptized, married and attended funerals and other ceremonies there. “I’ve lived here since I was two years old,” said Urbano Bahamondes, 64, who works as a host at the Colo Church. “I grew up near the church. I’ve helped repair it, so if we don’t take care of what we have, who will?”
When Ortiz was asked what she likes most of the Church of Nuestra Señora del Patrocinio of Tenaún, she said “everything.”
Graciela Ibáñez is a journalist with a Master of Arts from Columbia Journalism School, where she graduated in 2008. She works as a professor of journalism at Universidad Gabriela Mistral and at Universidad Viña del Mar in Chile. She covers Chile for foreign media outlets, including TRT World. She worked as a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires in Santiago and for the Financial Times Group in New York City. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Viña del Mar.