 |
||
|
||
Fr. Roger and Fr. Paul, |
||
September, 2009 On July 27 I headed south from Boston for a Society Council meeting in Lima. Having worked in Peru for more than ten years, going there was more like going home rather than being on a foreign venture. The first of August found me in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, for the first time. On this visit I had the honor to visit two mission sites that bid farewell to their missionaries: Fr. Roger Clarke and Fr. Paul Koch. Off in the hills of eastern Bolivia I had the joy of meeting with a fellow Chicagoan who has been in Bolivia for over fifty years. Fr. Ray Cowell is now retired and operates a prayer center. As we saw last month, the words of these dedicated missionaries will give us much food for thought. Fr. Roger Clarke reflects on 25 years in Peru and Bolivia: "Seven new missionaries arrived in Lima in the early hours of June 29, 1970. My first five years in the San Ricardo mission site in Lima were mainly occupied working with the parish social workers on the relocation of 5,000 of our parishioners who occupied the most notorious slum in the country. They were being cleared out to make room for a parking garage for a new soccer stadium. They and their few belongings were loaded up on the city’s garbage trucks and dumped in the desert twelve miles from the city. The area, Villa el Salvador, is now a huge urban area with a population of 500,000. I was involved in helping them with the initial wooden housing and school buildings. The second five years were devoted to the promotion of religious vocations and programs for the initial formation for the priesthood. In 1980 my bishop called me back to England. "In 1991 his successor allowed me to return to South America, this time to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I would become the pastor of Our Lady of Fatima, founded in 1959 by another St. James priest, Fr. Ray Cowell. The parish stretched twenty-five miles out of the city with an estimated population 156,000. Only God knew the real number. "Though recalled back to the UK again in 1999, I was back four years later, working as an assistant to the Vicar General on the Archdiocese, responsible for two neighborhood church areas and working as chaplain to the city’s cancer hospital. The hospital, especially the children’s unit, has been a great part of my life, but very sad as well for so many do not make it. Their names form a new litany of the saints. As I leave Latin America for probably the last time, the heart and mind are full of memories of so many wonderful and loving people: those whom I served and those who have helped and supported me over the years. "For three years now I’ve been saying to Fr. Paul: 'The day we leave here the city will get around to paving the streets.' Well, last week we were surrounded with machinery and last Saturday night the concrete was poured outside my bedroom window." Fr. Paul Koch reflects on his 46 years of priestly ministry in Bolivia: "Reality hit me when I landed in La Paz, Bolivia, in a prop plane on a gravel runway at 13,400 feet altitude. The terminal building was a big shed. The first person I saw was a Quechua lady dressed with the typical hat, shawl, full skirt and homemade sandals. The next day Fr. John Smith drove me along the Altiplano, 125 miles to the mining center of Oruro. Along the road I saw farms (no tractors, unlike my native Iowa), oxen pulling wooden plows and fields and fields of potatoes and quinoa (a nutritious cereal). No trees, cold temperatures, llamas, adobe houses with thatched roofs, mountains off in the distance all made me ask myself: 'What have I come to?' "Much has changed since then, mostly myself. Just two years out of the seminary, full of zeal to change the world with some knowledge of how to be church in the Midwest, I soon got my comeuppance. "Barely able to speak Spanish, zero knowledge of the two original languages spoken in the altiplano, Quechua and Aymara, I was as helpless as a child beginning to use a pencil. That was all forty-six years ago. So began the process of living in another culture and going beyond rejection and raising the question of 'Why don’t they do things like we do?' You are thrust into a sea of poverty where people love life and love to celebrate it in spite of suffering, sickness and, above all, injustice. "Thanks to the Second Vatican Council we began celebrating mass in the vernacular, facing the people. They could understand us and we could see them. Vatican II along with the documents from the Latin American Bishops’ Conference at Medellin, Columbia, drew the Church out of the sacristy and into the mainstream of life. Along with lots of turmoil we were asked to help the people discover the roots of their poverty and walk with them, doing something about it. Exploitation, injustice and abusive power were to be dealt with and not accepted as part of life. To be a part of all this the past forty-six years has been an eye-opening gift. To see our people go beyond Good Friday and the suffering Jesus and experience the Risen Lord on Easter Sunday is to observe a new people, with hope and new life. "One thing that I have learned is that I am always learning to be a missionary and to be grateful for this mission of living in another culture and receiving from it the grace to communicate the message of Jesus." Fr. Ray Cowell’s words of farewell to his colleagues and friends: "Their commitment in love and ministry to Bolivia’s poor and the Church added up to a total of 75 years! They themselves would hold that none of the difficulties and sacrifices met in their life of mission can be compared to finding Christ – His love and presence – already present in the Bolivian soul. "Fr. Paul Koch will be missed for many things, but especially for his preaching: profound, timely and 'on target.' His sermons revealed well God’s love and openness to all humanity. His gift of giving service and time to everyone is well known in the areas in which he served. "Consider finding any other pastor as the kind, efficient priest who is Roger Clarke. His ministry to the cancerous sick and dying, his design and construction talents, and an intense administration of parish and seminary projects are all coupled to a faithfully devout prayer life. "Both these singularly blessed priests will be long remembered for their passionate spirituality and personal gifts of character. How hard, then, to accept their leaving; but we heartily wish each of them: Bon Voyage!" How do you say thanks for nearly 125 years of priestly ministry spent in the missions by these three priests? Their words, however, reveal that they’re not looking for accolades. They are grateful as well for the gift of God’s grace, which made it all possible. Sincerely, Rev. Kevin Hays A tidbit of information: PROSAN (Producciones Santiago Apostal), the radio evangelization program started by St. James missionary Fr. George Flynn, has recently passed the halfway mark in 2009. At this point, there are some exciting updates they have to share: To date this year PROSAN has produced 132 new radio productions and sent out 5,125 radio programs copied onto cassettes, CDs and DVDs. These Catholic evangelization radio programs in Spanish and Quechua are transmitted weekly on sixty local radio stations throughout Peru and Bolivia. During this past year 2008 PROSAN produced 226 new productions and sent their 9,416 programs for local radio transmission. Four of their PROSAN programs are also transmitted twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week from Madrid Spain on podcast at www.prosan.podcast.es Fifteen subscribers to their broadcast service download programs from this free podcast server. Upcoming Events: The Annual Chicago/Joliet Banquet will be held on Monday, September 28th, 2009. For more information, please contact Mr. Dan Chorney at 630-964-2075, or visit www.socstjames.com/upcomingevents.html. The 30th Annual St. James Golf Tournament will take place on Wednesday, October 7th. For more details, please contact Fr. Peter Quinn at 978-692-6353. The Annual Boston Banquet will be held in Boston, on Sunday, November 8th, 2009. This year, the Society will honor The Honorable James T. Brett, Mr. & Mrs. Robert B. Crimmins and Most Reverend Robert F. Hennessey. For more information please visit www.socstjames.com/upcomingevents.html.
|
Fr. Roger Clarke oversees the construction of San Pedro Church.
Fr. Paul Koch cleans off his golf clubs after a day on the green.
|
|
