A final thought as I return to England



I said my goodbyes today to the parish as I make my way for England for the next few weeks. One of my parting gifts was of coffee beans grown in the home village of our pastoral assistant, Henry, seen here painted in the parish colour for the March for Peace! It was great to hear him speak of Café Direct which buys from his village - you may well see the Peruvian coffee with the photo of Machu Picchu in the supermarkets. Not only is it reassuring to hear that the price given there for the coffee enables people to live with dignity but also Café Direct ensures that the environment is respected and the production is sustainable. It seems a long way to the supermarket shelves for so many Fairtrade products and it was good to hear first hand that these products do change people’s lives and the world we live in.

March for Peace



Whilst many people long for peace and pray for peace, it’s not everyone who is willing to take to the streets to march for peace. But here it was great last weekend to join 3500 people from the local deanery including five bus loads from our parish marching for peace in every context, from the family to the world, from local community to international level. Peace based on justice and reconciliation. For the people of this area the memory of Peru’s terrorist era is still all too fresh. This was an area where people lived in fear and communities were divided and terrorised. The need for peace was all too obvious then and the realisation that peace is not brought about through apathy but through active participation and real action is very clear in people’s minds. The day was a great gathering with a festive spirit but also a clear message - peace will not just happen but will be brought about when people stand up for justice and create peace in their own families and neighbourhoods.

A Community 20 years young



The feast of St John the Baptist is popular in Peru for reasons yet undiscovered and as usual this means processions, bunting across the streets and, of course, all night parties. For the hillside barrio of Monterrey it is a particularly special feast as it marks the founding of their community 20 years ago. Photos from that time showed the arrival of people and their wicker houses on the barren hill including a community of sisters from the Little Sisters of Jesus congregation who have lived alongside the people here from its very beginning, sharing with them the slow progression from wicker walls to wood and finally to what is known as ‘noble material’ - to us bricks and mortar. Electricity was celebrated five years after the arrival, water and drainage is still a hope for the future although the government promised this a year ago.




We also celebrated First Holy Communion at mass that day in great festive style and although there is still a long way to go until this people can rejoice in what is taken for granted in so many places, there’s a great spirit here and a strong sense of community.

Buildings and People

Earlier this year work began on a chapel for the people of Amauta A, one of the parish valleys. It was to replace a dilapidated wooden and wicker panel construction which had served as a place to gather for some years. Work has been fast and the roof is ready to be started. Money which has been donated to me in these past months will enable the roof to be a solid concrete structure and hopefully by August the community will be back in their own chapel having celebrated mass on a Saturday evening in a small nearby park - fine in the Summer months up until March but in these past few weeks an increasingly chilly experience - people start shivering severely if the homily is too long!







































Thanks to all those who have been generous to support this work, for all the fund raising gatherings which have taken place. I’m sure it will be good to see the money going to good use.







Other ongoing projects include supporting the great work being done by Consuelo, the social worker here who is involved with many families and individuals suffering the wide ranging effects of poverty. There is great work done in providing a good balanced meal for children in the parish ‘comedor’ - the Order of Malta also run another one of these lunch projects in another part of the parish. And there are plans for educational and IT projects in the parish rooms. The roof of the parish rooms are even used for a Caritas (CAFOD’s international name) project to encourage people to cultivate their own small supply of vegetables.

Some Celebrations…

‘There’s always something to celebrate’ could be the motto of Peru. The photos included with this blog include the opening of a small scale soya processing plant, hoping to bring a much needed protein supplement to the people of this area. The Rotary Club had provided the machinery involved and there was an impressive display of local music and dance to accompany the obligatory numerous speeches that are a defining feature of any ceremony here.





















Later in the same week one of the communities up on a hill celebrated its feast day - Our Lord of Justice. Certainly the celebrations began with the celebration of mass but the stacked crates of beer in the background showed that the celebrations would be continuing in a different style. Sadly alcoholism and excessive drinking all too often leads to violence and harm in Peruvian society and there can be sharp divisions between those who truly wish to celebrate a religious festival and those looking for a chance to drink to excess.



















Last Saturday a new community up in the hills celebrated four years of moving into a barren new valley - having forged their own way through a rock face. Plots of land are marked out in chalk on the bare hillside, plans are submitted to the municipality, electricity probably took some years to arrive, the dust track is constructed by the community itself. Water and drainage is still probably years in the future. Hard beginnings for this determined and committed group of people who I see from the park where we celebrate mass at 7am on a Sunday, silhouetted on the ridge of the hill with picks and shovels pushing out the boundaries of civilisation in this inhospitable place.



















Finally, we hosted a group of 12 volunteers from Ireland - some of whom helped with the construction of a chapel in the Amauta valley, some of whom went visiting with Consuelo the parish social worker. They were a great hit with the parish community and there was, of course, a party to send them on their way back to Ireland!

All Change!

Since my last blog so much has happened. It was just a few days after that entry that my grandmother died and I was glad to have been able to spend time with my family back in England within just two days of the news that she was seriously ill.



Since arriving back here in April I have spent time in San Juan de Lurigancho and received there a wonderful welcome both from the two priests there and from the people of the parish. The parish priest there Jorge Alvarez is now 80 years old and still going strong - he has been a well known figure in the Peruvian church and in society, speaking out for greater social justice in the Country and for the rights of the poor. It was good to have spent even a short time with him in the parish of San Marcos. However, after careful thought and consideration with the St James’ Society, it was felt that this was not the right place to be. If anything, whilst there is still great poverty in the area, much of the infrastructure of parish life and of basic medical needs were in place. The St James Society does try to target places in greater need. Being in South America is teaching me to travel light and so I have packed my bags again and have moved to take the place of Fr Darren Reid who is presently back in England. The parish is one I have spoken of in previous blogs: the parish of the Risen Lord El Resucitado in Ate Vitarte.



Ate Vitarte thirty years ago consisted of little more than a few streets which had sprung up around the main road running east of Lima, the Carretera Central. It was an area blighted by the years of terrorism in the seventies and eighties and finally has emerged as an area where people have moved searching for small plots of land often perched on the hillside where they can start to build a home.



Home building is a long process a long way removed from our ideas of the ‘starter home’. The land in the beginning is simply ‘invaded’ but, in order to achieve later recognition from the local authority, people need to form themselves into a group and devise a ground plan for the proposed plots of land. This is important too as eventual supplies of electricity, water and drainage will depend on this early recognition. The early structure of houses consists of woven wicker panels with perhaps some plastic sheeting to cover. Fortunately it very rarely rains here as can be seen from the barren landscape. It may then progress to a wooden structure and from there to a single storey brick building. Many of these brick houses have steel rods sticking out of the tops of the walls ready one day to build a second storey. In an area thirty years old many of the families are just reaching the stage of completing a two storey simple home. A long and arduous task and on that stands in stark contrast to the ready made homes we are used to.



It was a great joy to be celebrating mass with the people here again. The same joy I remember from my first visit back in January. In total there are 7 chapels in the parish and two places where Sunday mass is celebrated outside in the local park. Obviously some communities have mass just once a month and two of the chapels are cared for by priests of a religious order. Some communities have been established for some years now while others are celebrating their first anniversary of existence. What characterises all though is the enthusiasm of people in their faith and in their lives.

Society of St James
Just a quick blog to put up a photo of the present members of the Society of St James - 'borrowed' from the blog of Cardinal Seán O'Malley!

San Juan de Lurigancho



Receiving an appointment to a parish has been a different experience to anything previous in my ministry. Firstly the variety of different places from the high Andes to the coastal desert has given me much to think about and reflect on. And secondly beginning work in a parish can also mean beginning from scratch. No house to move to and much infrastructure lacking in terms of church and meeting rooms. And that is what I shall be doing in San Juan de Lurigancho, working closely with a Peruvian priest for the coming months.

San Juan de Lurigancho lies to the east of Lima in the Diocese of Chosica. In 1940 there were 1,036 inhabitants, in 1961 that had risen to 9,456. By 1986 the figure was 447,928 and in 1997, 676,795. No doubt the figure ten years on is much higher still. People are still desperately trying to find work in Lima and here is one of the places to come if you have little or no money.

Some statistics about San Juan de Lurigancho:



35% Under 15 years old
27% Chronically undernourished
22% Without electricity
30% Without water
13% Without drainage
9% With no amenities
22% With just one room in the house
34% With an earthen floor…

Where the St James Society will begin to work will have even higher rates of poverty as the parish will be where people are still moving into makeshift housing, rather than the now more established areas which at least boast better basic amenities even if conditions are still tough.

At first glance at this area you would wonder how can people still be moving into this place, but the barren hills here which have long been too inhospitable are now the only option and houses are springing up perched on the hillsides.

For these coming months I am glad to be working alongside Fr Jorge Alvarez a well respected priest in this City and then the plan will be to form a new parish with two St James priests working together. I am sure I’m just at the beginning of a very steep learning curve!

Mountain Parishes

In February I packed my rucksack and set off for the Peruvian Andes around the world famous former Inca capital of Cuzco. The St James’ Society has remote two parishes in the neighbouring prelature of Sicuani as well as a priest working in the training of local priests. Once again I experienced the tiring effects of altitude on arriving in the tourist city of Cuzco. It was good to take a couple of days to acclimatize in this beautiful and historic city. Amongst the fascinating engineering of Inca buildings and the unique beauty of the Spanish colonial churches there was even a bar selling Greene King ales on tap!





The pleasures of a city well adapted to the needs of a healthy tourist population were soon to be forgotten as our bus left the depot. Traffic police in an attempt to improve the tragically poor history of road safety now check buses as they leave. No standing passengers allowed… until the bus turns a few corners and another 20 people board out of sight of the officials! I was glad to be near a window just to be able to breathe, although for the month of the carnival you have to keep windows tightly closed when passing groups of children if you want to avoid the customary water bombs! Ten hours of bumpy rough dirt tracks later we arrived in Velille, a town of 5000 where two priests from the Philippines serve the town and surrounding countryside stretching many miles. Here poverty levels are some of the very highest in the world, according to statistics on resources, education, health, economics. Like many people in Peru, the inhabitants of this area suffered terribly in the years blighted by terrorism especially in the 1980’s.



I was lucky enough to be in the town for the carnival celebrations just before Lent began. Great numbers from the town and surrounding villages turned out for a day of music and folk dancing… and of course water fights!






I continued my journey through the Andes heading for Bolivia where I needed to visit the Peruvian consulate in La Paz - nothing is ever straightforward in bureaucracy! On the way I visited a floating village on Lake Titicaca near Puno. Near here Ray O’Sullivan teaches in the local seminary which hopefully in years to come will be fully able to supply priests to work in these parts.

The border at Desaguadero is a bridge dividing the town in two and the responsibility for finding the right office for passport stamps lies solely with the traveller! Any hopes for a bus with a little more leg room than the Peruvian ones were soon dashed as I squeezed into a local ‘combi’ in which I felt like an oversized character from Alice in Wonderland!



What was meant to be a quick stop in La Paz and a brief visit to the consulate turned into a three day stay and sadly cut short my visit to the Gamboa family in Cochabamba who so generously and patiently welcomed me into their home for five months last year. It was though good to see them again and also to meet the three new priests studying Spanish at the language school for the St James’ Society before heading back to Lima - thankfully by plane!

St James’ gathering

It was good to have the opportunity to meet all those working for the Society at the Annual General Meeting held every February in Lima. The members range from those who have served in South America all their priestly lives to those like myself making a commitment of five years. What characterizes those I have met is a great enthusiasm and energy for the work amongst the peoples of South America. Whatever the hardships of life here, the response is far from despairing and instead seems to be a source of determination, joy and resolve.



It was good to welcome to Lima the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Seán O’Malley under whose leadership the Society exists. The Cardinal clearly has a great interest in the work going on and wrote much about his visit in his personal blog on the website of the Archdiocese of Boston.

Pictured here are the new St James' priests with the Director, Finbarr O'Leary, and Cardinal Seán.