No wreckages of despair

01.10.2008

Associate diocesan priests have worked with Columban missionaries for many years in Latin America.

“I arrived here in Lima a few days ago and was met by two Columban Fathers,” writes Father Joseph W. Shepherd, the first priest from the Auckland diocese to go to South America on loan for five years. “I am now part of the community at the Columbans’ centre house.”

Father Shepherd noted in his letter that it was only a week since he had left home and he had crossed the 6,000 miles of the Pacific in about 20 hours of flying.

“One of the first things I did was to visit Father Paul Prendergast, a Columban from Akaroa ordained in 1963. He is an assistant in St Matthew’s, a two-priest parish of 14,000 people who live in what is called here a ‘barriada’.

“These barriadas are a real shock to a New Zealander - at least to me. Though after a while they don’t appear so bad, they are still dirty in many parts, shabby and greatly congested.

“These slum people are not wreckages of despair but people of hope and energy. The children go to school, the man tries to find work and many do; some save.

Great Problem

“These vast slums are a great, unsightly problem all the same. I went out with Father Prendergast on his Holy Communion round of the sick to three homes. I have never been in any thing as bad as one. Another was better and the third was perfectly, clean. It had TV in the front part (these people have come from primitive mud conditions of the Sierra to TV in a few years).

“Life in the presbytery of this barriada is very much the same as anywhere. There is the door bell, marriages to prepare, credit union to supervise, 12 state schools to attend for catechetics.

“Though catechetics is part of the syllabus in all schools, priests prepare the teachers and visit classes.

“There is a mothers’ club that teaches sewing, cooking and hygiene, a senoritas’ club and a children’s club. The parish employs an assistant, a trained social worker who in this case is a sister, and the treasurer of a co-operative which the parish supervises.

“I have visited three or four of the presbyteries. Everywhere the situation is the same - friendly, energetic priests doing their best and achieving very much indeed. There are some barriadas of course that have no priest because there just isn’t any.

“This is just a note to say I am here, conditions are desperate, and we start the language school next week for three months,” Father Shepherd concludes.

- Taken from The Far East, March 1, 1968.