Guatemalan martyrs acknowledged

Today the Vatican announced the recognition of ten martyrs of Guatemala, including three Spanish Missionary of the Sacred Heart priest. They and seven lay Guatemalans were martyred in the midst of the terror of the early eighties. I am very glad that the Vatican is acknowledging a few of the thousands of lay Guatemalans martyred for their commitment to their faith.

Many years ago I found a book on the priests. Here are a few quotes from them.

Fr. José Maria Gran Cirera, MSC, Spanish priest, Missionary of the Sacred Heart, and Domingo Bats, sacristan, killed near Xiexojbitz, in the municipality of Chajul, El Quiche, Guatemala, 4 June, 1980.

“I am finding out what Christmas is. It is that God came among human beings to give meaning to all of them, principally the poorest and those disillusioned with life, to give them hope. This is what I am coming to understand more and more every year that I am in contact with the peoples of Quiché. They help me live the hope and joy which Jesus brings.”

Fr. Juan Alonso Fernández, MSC, Spanish priest, Missionary of the Sacred Heart, killed, in La Barranca, between Uspantán and Cunén, El Quiché, Guatemala, 15 February, 1981.

“In no way do I want anyone to kill me; but I am not at all ready, out of fear, to shrink from being present among these people. Once again I now think: ‘Who can separate us from the love of Christ?’” (in a letter to one of his brothers)

“One of the attitudes which most impresses me about the personality of Jesus Christ is his total availability to his Father and to all people. After that, his freedom in the face of the formalities, the ideologies of his time, the persons, the powers, the interests.”

Fr. Faustino Villanueva, MSC, Spanish priest, Missionary of the Sacred Heart, worked with the indigenous, martyred in Joyabaj, El Quiché, Guatemala, July 10, 1980.

 “We cannot leave the people abandoned. The situation is very bad.”

 

Martyrs of the Quiché, pray for us.

An OKIE martyr

“A nice compliment was given to me recently when a supposed leader in the Church and town was complaining that ‘Father is defending the people.’
He wants me deported for my sin.
“This is one of the reasons I have for staying in the face of physical harm.
The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.
Pray for us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people,
that our presence among them will fortify them
to endure these sufferings in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom.”
Father Stanley Rother
1980 Christmas Letter

Thirty-five years ago, on July 28, 1981, a priest from Oklahoma, Father Stanley Rother, was killed in the rectory of the church of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. María Ruíz Scaperlanda has written a beautiful book on his life, The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run.

He, like another US missionary whom I knew, Maryknoll Father Ron Hennessey, took accompanying the poor as central to his missionary work. Father Ron lived and served many years in Guatemala and El Salvador, living in situations of war and injustice, and quietly making known the sufferings of his people. Fr. Ron died on a visit back to his native Iowa.

Father Stan, Apl’as to the indigenous members of his parish, had a shorter life as a missionary as he was killed one evening, a few days after the town’s feast of Saint James. He knew that “To h the hand of an Indian is a political act.”

But Father Stan is not the only martyr from this beautiful town on Lago Atitlán. Note two plaques in the church in Santiago Atitlán – here and here.

On January 3, 1981, Diego Quic Apuchan, Mayan Indian catechist, was disappeared and killed, Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, 1981. As he had noted to Fr. Stan:

“I have never stolen, have never hurt anyone, have never eaten someone else’s food. Why, then, do they want to hurt me and kill me?

On April 21, 1989, Juan Sisay, painter, president of Catholic Action, martyred in his home in Santiago Atitlán.

On December 2, 1990, Thirteen campesinos killed in Santiago Atitlán massacre, as the army fired on several thousand unarmed peaceful Tzutujil Mayas. Their story is told here.

It is important to remember Father Stan and to recall his witness. But we are also called on to recall the many others killed because of their faith and their commitment to the poor – in his parish, in Guatemala, in El Salvador, in Honduras, and even now in other parts of the world.

And the challenge for us? How to be witnesses in our daily lives in such a way that if we are facing martyrdom we may face it with joy and love and forgiveness.

 

An Okie Saint

Earlier this month the Vatican declared that Father Stan Rother died as a martyr in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, on July 28, 1981.

A missionary from Oklahoma he earned the love and respect of the indigenous people who were in his parish. He learned their language – and they called him A’plas.

Henri Nouwen wrote Love in a Fearful Land: A Guatemalan Story and María Ruiz Scaperlanda’s book, The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run: Fr. Stanley Rother: Martyr from Oklahoma, will be out at the end of September. So I won’t say much about his life.

But Father Stan is another witness of God’s love for the poor and the costs of discipleship.

He was not unaware of the costs and the dangers, especially in Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s. As he wrote in his Christmas 1980 letter:

“A nice compliment was given to me recently when a supposed leader in the Church and town was complaining that ‘Father is defending the people.’ He wants me deported for my sin.
“This is one of the reasons I have for staying in the face of physical harm. The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify them to endure these sufferings in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom.”

Yet he did leave for a time when he was informed that he was on a death list. However, he returned.

All of us, not only those in mission lands, need the witness of Father Stan so that we can have the courage to stand with those in need, at the margins of this world – as Pope Francis says – offering a sing of love and perseverance in the midst of dangers and trials.

For martyrs aren’t made at the moment of death. Martyrs have prepared for their self-giving by a life of putting God and others at the center. Death is accepted because life has been given –  as Jesus did.

Crucified Christ in Santiago Atitlán Church

Farmer saints and justice for the land

San Isidro La Cueva procession 2013

Today is the feast of Saint Isidore the Farmer, a Spanish farm laborer who – with his wife Turibia (sometimes known as Santa María de la Cabeza) – is an example of the holiness of workers on the land.

My 24 years in Ames, Iowa, left me with a profound respect for farmers and for all those who work on the land.

In Iowa there is – or, at least, has been – a rural culture of respect for the land and care for others. How many times did I hear of farmers getting together to harvest the crop of a neighbor who had fallen ill.

Yes, many farmers have given in to the desire for gain at all cost. But many still respect the land and some who provide people with wholesome food. Thanks are due to them, including Gary, Ellen, Alice, and others.

But the issues for farmers in the US and here in Central America are not just questions of ecology; they include land tenure and more.

In a 1988 pastoral letter, The Cry for Land, the Guatemalan bishops wrote:

We belong to the earth (Gen 2:7) and it belongs to us because when the Lord created us, he charged us to till it and care for it (Gen 2:15). Thus, work in agriculture appears the quintessential task by which we situate ourselves in the world and before God.

Many scriptural texts express joy at the fruit of our fatiguing labor on the land and our thanksgiving for God’s blessing. When the land bears a crop, we know that God blesses us (Ps 67:7; 85:13)….

The land does not belong to us, but to God, and what each calls property is in reality the portion needed to live. ‘The land and all in it, the world and those who inhabit it, belong to God” (Ps 24:1)….

In Recife, Brazil, [Pope] John Paul II told the farmers: ‘The land is a gift from God, a gift for all human beings, men and women, who are called to be united in a single family and related to one another in a fraternal spirit. Therefore, it is not legitimate, because it is not according to God’s design, to use this gift so that its fruits benefit only a few, excluding others, who form the immense majority.’”

Today, remembering San Isidro Labrador and his wife Santa María de la Cabeza, I pray for all farmers, all workers on the land.

And so I’m heading out in about an hour for Mass in the village of San Isidro La Cueva to celebrate the feast with campesinos and campesinos.

Getting political

“To shake the hand of an Indian is a political act.”
Fr. Stanley Rother

Fr. Stanley Rother was a priest – an Oklahama farm boy, as Robert Ellsberg writes – who spent many years in the indigenous town of Santiago Atitlan, serving the pastoral needs of the people.

On July 28, 1981, he was killed in the rectory by three armed men who sought to silence his voice.

Crucified Christ in Santiago Atitlán Church

From what I can gather he was not a very “political” person, like some people I know here in Central America, including some priests. But his work with founding cooperatives and training catechists and pastoral workers made him a threat to the powers of Guatemala in those days. Those rulers saw every effort to work with the indigenous peoples and to empower them as threats to their national security state.

I have always been struck by Father Stan’s statement: “To shake the hand of an Indian is a political act.”

I think this has been part of the inspiration of my custom to shake the hand of almost everyone I meet when I come into a meeting.`

Here it is customary for the men to greet each other with a handshake. But I try to shake the hand of everyone – man, woman, child. Sometimes the younger children recoil, or even cry – not having seen many gringos. But other kids just smile – a little embarrassed, perhaps.

But I consider that this simple act is a way to show that I try to respect their dignity as children of God, as my sisters and brothers in Christ.

The little things mean a lot.

Thus I have grieved when I see the reaction of some in the US to the tens of thousands of young people and children who have fled poverty or violence or have travelled far to meet up with their parents. The hate, the fear, the anger fill me with a deep sadness.

But I rejoice at those who welcome the stranger, open their churches and houses to the adolescent and child migrants who seek a like of tranquility.

Their acts are political acts – not because they are supporting a political ideology, but because they are opening their lives and their hearts to the poor, the migrant, the stranger.

And in that political act, which is really just a human act, they are – I pray – experiencing Christ.

 

The gift of the land

Today is the feast of Saint Isidore the Farmworker, who lived and worked the land near Madrid.

Not much is known about his life but maybe what is important about him for us is his work on the land.

Procession, San Isidro La Cueva, 2013

He was a farmworker – so poor that he worked for a landowner, as so many people do these days in places like Honduras.

Some campesinos here don’t have enough money to buy land, or the land is overpriced, or large landowners buy up most of the land and use it for grazing cattle or growing cash crops. All too often those who work the land don’t have access to land where they can grown corn and beans for their families.

A few decades ago, the Guatemalan bishops wrote a prophetic pastoral letter, The Cry of the Land. Here are a few excerpts.

We belong to the earth (Gen 2:7) and it belongs to us because when the Lord created us, he charged us to till it and care for it (Gen 2:15). Thus, work in agriculture appears the quintessential task by which we situate ourselves in the world and before God.

Many scriptural texts express joy at the fruit of our fatiguing labor on the land and our thanksgiving for God’s blessing. When the land bears a crop, we know that God blesses us (Ps 67:7; 85:13)….

The land does not belong to us, but to God, and what each calls property is in reality the portion needed to live. ‘The land and all in it, the world and those who inhabit it, belong to God” (Ps 24:1)….

In Recife, Brazil, [Pope] John Paul II told the farmers: “The land is a gift from God, a gift for all human beings, men and women, who are called to be united in a single family and related to one another in a fraternal spirit. Therefore, it is not legitimate, because it is not according to God’s design, to use this gift so that its fruits benefit only a few, excluding others, who form the immense majority.”

The Black Christ

Black Christ of Esquipulas

Today we in this part of Latin America celebrate the feast of Nuestro Señor de los Misericordias, Our Lord of Mercy. But it is commonly known as the feast of the Black Christ, specifically the Black Christ of Esquipulas.

Pilgrims throng the church in Esquipulas, Guatemala, to pay reverence to the cross dating from 1594. Over the years, the crucified image turned dark – and began to be called el Cristo Negro.

Cristo negro de Intibucá

There are other Black Christs throughout the region, including one in Quezalica, Copán, which I haven’t yet visited. There is also one in church in the center of the town of  Intibucá.

There may be other images of a black Christ throughout the world – most notably in Africa and among African Americans.

There are also black images of Mary throughout  Europe, some like the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, but one of the most notable (because of its connections to St. Ignatius of Loyola is Our Lady of Montserrat.

Our Lady of Montserrat, Manresa retreat house, Detroit

But what color was Christ?

I think it is clear that he was not blue-eyed and white skinned as many of us grew up with. But that image prevails even here. Note the image of Christ painted by a young Honduran in the Dulce Nombre de María church. (I afterwards told him that Christ was probably not white and showed him a number of alternative images.)

But how often do we white North Americans make Christ in our image and likeness – not only with blue eyes, blond hair, and white skin? How often do we make Christ according to our prejudices, a supporter of our way of life, our imperial demands, our upward mobility?

What if we thought of Jesus as marginalized – as a person of color?

Christ, painted by a young Palestinian

Wouldn’t that make us a different kind of Christian?

Guatemala’s Martyred Bishop, Juan Geradi

The history of Central America, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, is bloody. Many know of the violence in El Salvador, partly because of the killings of Archbishop Romero and the four US women missionaries in 1980, partly because of the overt US support of the government and military – in the mid-1980s at a rate of about one million US dollars a day.

The history of Guatemalan oppression is much less known, though it is bloodier and lasted longer. After the war was over, the Guatemalan Archdiocesan Human Rights Office supported the Recovery of Historical Memory Project [REMHI], to investigate the killings. The project released a report that implicated the Guatemalan government and military in 90% of the 200,000 plus killings and disappearances.

Guatemala City auxiliary bishop Juan Gerardi led the investigation and spoke at the release of the report. He had experienced the repression first hand when he was bishop of Santa Cruz de Quiché. The violence got so bad that he and the priests withdrew from the diocese, partly at the urging of the people. He went into exile but later returned.

Two days after the REMHI report was released, Bishop Gerardi was killed on April 26, 1988, fifteen years ago today.

When he reported the findings of the REMHI report on April 24, 1998, he noted the importance of the report and the dangers in releasing such information:

We want to contribute to the building of a country different than the one we have now.  For that reason we are recovering the memory of our people.  This path has been and continues to be full of risks, but the construction of the Reign of God has risks and can only be built by those that have the strength to confront those risks.

Even today there are dangers as can be noted in the trial of former Guatemalan general and president Rios Montt, which was revealing more of the massacres of indigenous peoples. The status of the trial is unsure now. For more information, look at the Central American Politics blog of a friend and University of Scranton professor, Mike Allison.

Impunity for crimes against the poor and indigenous are not uncommon in Latin America.

But that means that we are called even more to practice the virtue of solidarity, that is, as Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis [On Social Concern], paragraph 28, wrote, the “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all….”

This is not something political, nor is it merely the social aspect of our faith. Solidarity is, as Gustavo Gutiérrez puts it, “an encounter with God.”

Bishop Gerardi put it more starkly, on March 10, a few weeks before his martyrdom:

We ought to reflect on the suffering of Christ in his Mystical Body. That means, that if the poor person is not part of our life, then, perhaps, Christ is not part of our life.

El sufrimiento de Cristo en su cuerpo místico es algo que nos debe hacer reflexionar. Es decir, si el pobre está fuera de nuestra vida, entonces quizás, Jesús está fuera de nuestra vida.

May Christ – present in the suffering and the poor, in the crucified peoples of this world – become ever more central to our lives.

Bishop Gerardi, martyr

Bishop Juan Gerardi, auxiliary bishop of Guatemala City, founder and director of the Archdiocesan Human Rights Office, active in the Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI), assassinated, Guatemala City, was killed on April 26,1998. He was 75 years old.

He had been the bishop of the diocese of Quiché, but had to leave because of the violence in 1980. He had also asked all priests and religious to leave because of the violence.

After a visit to the Vatican he tried to return to Guatemala but was denied entry to his native country. After a two year exile in Costa Rica, he returned. In 1984 he was named auxiliary bishop in the Guatemala City archdiocese.

As director of the Human Rights Office he took a major role in the Recovery of Historical Memory project which presented a major study of the deaths and disappearances that plagued Guatemala for Decades. (It is available in English, Guatemala: Never Again!, published by Orbis Books.)

He once wrote:

The Church, in solidarity with and in service of a people that is persecuted and tormented, is also called to share the suffering, the persecution, and the death which confirm the authenticity of its solidarity and service. Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that the servant is not greater than his Master. In Guatemala, the Church is paying dearly for its defense of the poor and its solidarity with those who suffer.

Guatemala suffered hundreds of deaths of lay pastoral workers, priests, and religious for their commitment to the poor. Bishop Gerardi also gave his life, gunned down just two days after presenting the findings on human rights violations.

Would there were more bishops like Monseñor Gerardi and Monseñor Oscar Romero who have the courage to face real persecution because of their defense of the poor. These are the real heroes of faith who give their lives in service of others.