Columban Fr Dermot Carthy who has been on mission in Peru since 1960 shares with us the story of his 25 year struggle with bureaucracy to build a new church in the northern suburbs of Lima.
When I returned to Most Holy Redeemer Parish in 1989 I noticed how the population had grown. The fertile farmland was sprouting new homes. It was obvious sites for a new church and several chapels would be needed. By law, in Peru, 2% of the area for new housing must be left aside for “other needs”. The Church can request the use of such spaces from the local municipality. 
I spotted a very suitable site and set about getting it. Little did I guess it would take 25 years. The relevant authorities knew nothing about such land. Two years later the reason became clear. The housing cooperative which was developing the locality had never handed over the land. The group’s president was trafficking in vacant sites and was trying to sell illegally the “other needs” ground. The residents finally succeeded in voting him out after 19 years. He kept his grip on power by suing or accusing anybody who questioned or opposed him. Accusing in the police station cost him little, but the accused usually had to pay a lawyer lest the matter got into the snail-paced courts.
The new officials of the cooperative supported my request and together we started on the red-tape paper work to have the site transferred to the municipality. However the new mayor was in the pay of the ex-president and the officials did not trust either the mayor or the municipal employees. The previous 19 years of payoffs had sown that problem.
Two years later I got permission to wall off the site. When work began on digging foundations, Mr X (a local powerbroker) paid some thugs to attack the workmen. Next day the mayor revoked the licence. Endless trips to the office of the oh-so-busy mayor and the repeated mantra of “come back next week”, went on for two more years.
Finally a new mayor was elected who did agree to give the site. But first the cooperative’s officials had to be convinced to sign over the land to the municipality. Their fear was he might hand it over to somebody else. Eighteen months later all was signed and sealed.
Then Mr X and friends took the matter to the courts to have the agreement annulled, with the mayor, the bishop and me as plaintiffs. I was the one who had to face the music in several hearings.
In the first court the decision was against us on the fragile grounds that the decree did not specify what the land was for. An appeal to a second court was in our favour. This in turn was appealed to the Supreme Court, which found in our favour. These legal details took only five years.
The next three years were full of tiring trips to municipal bureaucrats, some in the pay of our dear and expensive friends. Building permission was delayed time and again because the plan had to be corrected, or changed, or signed by an absent engineer. Once our address was put in a locality 20 miles away. This took three weeks to rectify. The paper work must have travelled from office to office on the back of a lame tortoise.
As the licence began to take shape Mr X began lodging complaints in different authorities around town. I was accused of trying to take over a public park, of destroying trees and damaging the ecology, of exceeding the area granted by the municipality, of having the support of only 20 people while he had 200 (forged) signatures rejecting the project.
At last work began with around-the-clock police protection. By law if a house or building site is taken over for 24 hours, all work must stop and only a court order can remove the squatters. Remembering my five-year trip through three clogged courts, I decided it was better to employ off-duty police.
Three months later a municipal engineer stopped the work. Every week he kept on discovering flaws and gaps in the approved plans. Twelve weeks later he could not discover anymore and gave his approval.
After a whole year we finally inaugurated the 700-seater church. 1200 people attended and they liked the end result.
Eventually I hope to build on the site a parish residence and several meeting rooms for preparing children for First Communion, youths for Confirmation, couples for marriage and adult catechesis. Funds for most of this will come from the sale of the nearby 130-seater chapel and the collections of the parishioners which have been generous.
Sometime in the future this will become a parish, dividing the present one into two with a mere 45,000 people each. The main hitch in this scenario is that the 18 year-old diocese (cut off Lima Archdiocese) has a population of 2,700,000 and 103 priests, of whom over half are Columbans and other foreigners, most of whom were young 40 years ago.
Columbans have worked in this area since 1952, setting up half of the present parishes in this diocese. Columban benefactors have been very generous over these years and for this we are truly grateful.
Fr Dermot Carthy was ordained in 1959 and has ministered in Pery since 1960.
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