Actually, there is always a small number of people on the continent of Antarctica (McMurdo Station, etc.) — they rotate in and out. As the Christchurch diocese’s website points out, though, there are no longer enough practicing Catholics to justify having a mission. I am reading this to say that the Catholics who are stationed there do not practice their faith. That is sad.
That would be fine, but the Catholics would not be allowed by the Orthodox to receive sacraments.
I didn’t say you did, I was just stating the fact. I don’t know how such situations are handled between Catholic and Orthodox. I may be having a false memory, but I seem to recall a traditionalist Catholic priest (SSPX-affiliated but otherwise independent) saying one time that he and a nearby Coptic Orthodox priest had some kind of arrangement worked out, if there were ever a case when one or the other were not available to their faithful (extreme unction, viaticum, etc.).I never wrote that the Catholics would receive any of the sacraments.
In a case like this, I hope the bishop of the Orthodox priest and the bishop of the Catholic person working in Antarctica, could work something out, especially for the Sacrament of Penance.
When you say “Syrian Orthodox”, are you referring to the Oriental Orthodox church by that name (Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch), or the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch (commonly called the “Antiochian Orthodox Church” in the US)? Adherents of the latter commonly refer to themselves as “Syrians”.