Missionaries for the love of Christ

Missionaries for the love of Christ
Irish missionary work in Venezuela is worth celebrating even in 
troubled times, 
Greg Daly learns

 

This summer, Ireland’s Sacred Heart Missionaries (MSC) celebrated the 50th anniversary of their mission in Venezuela, but compared with 1992’s silver jubilee, the mission’s golden jubilee celebration was a low key affair.

“We had a Mass first,” explains Fr Vincent Screene, the missionaries’ regional leader in the South American country, briefly back in Ireland before attending the MSC general chapter in Rome. “The bishop and auxiliary came, and a big crowd, and then afterwards we had a little meal for the people. It consisted of two bread rolls with ham and cheese rolled up inside of them. It was a very simple meal, with soft drinks, that we distributed among the people after Mass. We showed a video too, showing the years we’ve been in Venezuela, and there were speeches as well, but all very simple.”

He adds: “It was very simple in comparison with what we had 25 years ago, when we celebrated our 25th anniversary – that would have been very much bigger even though the occasion called for far more this time.”

Times have changed since 1992, of course. Hardly a wealthy country 25 years ago, Venezuela is in turmoil now, torn by political strife, threatened with foreign military intervention, and facing an economic crisis that has left it desperately short of food and medication.

As Fr Vincent’s provincial, Fr Joe McGee, told The Irish Catholic earlier in August, his visit to Venezuela for the golden jubilee celebrations was the first time he had seen people there scavenging for food in rubbish heaps, while deteriorating facilities, declining supplies, and a popular fear were all obvious.

Fr Joe has known Venezuela for 12 years just as a visitor; for Fr Vincent, on the other hand, it has been his home for 50 years.

Medicine

Born in Skehana, Co. Galway, he was just 25 when he was sent to Venezuela, one of four Irish priests who would build the first MSC community in the country. Roscommon’s Fr Joe Ruddy, who returned to Ireland this month owing to a lack of necessary medicine in Venezuela, was – with Fr Damian Donohue and Fr Tony Boland – one of his companions in that pioneering mission.

Climate, food, language, and culture all posed challenges at the start, of course, but tasked with ministering to a vast parish of 50,000 people – though few were practicing – the young MSCs weren’t short of work to focus on. “It was difficult work, and we weren’t making a lot of headway, but we were working hard with the catechism in the schools and with groups of adults and so on” says Fr Vincent.

When the Irish missionaries first arrived, he says, petrol was about $2 a barrel, but just five years later a barrel cost around $40, which brought money into the oil-producing country on an unprecedented scale, enabling huge changes in education and healthcare.

“It made a big impact on the country,” he says. “Quality of life began to increase. There were still a lot of marginal people – this was not trickling down to them – but still there were a lot of big changes in the country, and gains in prestige as well.”

Corruption unfortunately went hand in hand with progress during the 1970s and 1980s, and drastic economic reforms in the late 1980s came to a head with a wave of popular protests and riots in February 1989. Official figures put the numbers killed in the ‘Caracazao’ riots at 276, but it is commonly believed that the numbers killed were far higher.

“These were people from the barrios,” Fr Vincent says. “Ordinary people, not military people. They were crushed by the military.”

Until the late 1980s the missionaries had focused mainly on pastoral work without a lot of social involvement, Fr Vincent says, but “in the late 80s and 90s especially we began packets of food to give to the poor and so on at that stage”. Around that point they were also working with children in schools and social activities, he says.

“A lot of pastoral work has a big impact on the social conditions,” he explains. “The family, for instance: one-parent families – if people are educated you’ve a better chance of having an established family, rather than one-parent ones. There are really many, many one-parent families, which makes life very difficult, both for the kids and the parent.”

Strains on family life in such situations are immense, he observes. “The economic difficulties on the one hand, and of course as well other social areas – drugs and so on. They’re very vulnerable in all areas really. The patterns of the family tend to repeat themselves, often for the worst – the parents, the kids, the grandchildren.”

For all that one-parent families face grave challenges in Ireland, matters are rather more difficult in Latin America, he says. “Of course it affects the poverty level of the families; I would say here they have a lot better chance of making a living, the one-parent families, than there. They’ve no subsidies, for instance, no children’s allowance, so it’s very difficult for single parents, who are far more numerous than here.”

Explaining how the MSCs tend to work with and through such movements as the Christian family movement and Marriage Encounter in trying to help struggling families in the barrios, he says, “this is one of the areas where we have done a lot”.

Pointing out that poor families in the barrios of Venezuela often have large numbers of children, Fr Vincent notes that single parents in these contexts often face stark choices. “Very stark, very difficult – and this is on a wide scale,” he says.

The MSCs are doing their best to help people across their two parishes Maracaibo and Caracas, Fr Vincent says, explaining that they have about 20 centres out of which they work across the two. “There are big areas where we scarcely have a presence in, but we’re trying to get more involved,” he says, adding as an example how “we’ve a school in a very poor area with a lot of local Indians, Wayú Indians from La Guajira”.

Part of this, he says, is simply being there for people, “accompanying people, being available for people who come to talk, supporting people morally in the situation of poverty they’re in and the political situation they’re in, helping people insofar as we can”.

This means helping people with their material needs as much as possible, along with their spiritual ones, and Fr Vincent describes how one Sunday in Lent the community made soup for hundreds of people in the barrios.

“Before we used to have packets of food that we’d give out, but now, since food is so scarce and difficult to get and you might have to spend hours in queues to get it, we give a financial donation, and people would be able to extend this more than we could,” he says.

“Of course, they don’t like it in the queues, but if they have to do it they can get the food cheaper. So we would be helping out a lot in that way, giving donations to people and helping people to help themselves in small ways,” he continues, adding that the community would also help in supplying people with things as diverse as beds, mattresses and sheet iron for roofs. “We help people as far as we can, and the demands there are – really – without limits,” he says.

Commenting on how Fr Joe had witnessed people scavenging for food when he visited the country, Fr Vincent says: “Anywhere you go you’d see it, but you won’t see a lot of people – you’ll see individuals here and there. People are in dire necessity. That is something you wouldn’t have seen before.”

Noting that “the shortage of food is affecting an awful lot of people at all levels” Fr Vincent says a lack of medicine is in its own way as challenging.

“We don’t have any statistics but they say there’s a 90% shortage of medicine, and I’ve found myself that I find it very hard to get medicine out there,” he says, continuing, “it’s very widespread and very sad: people just can’t get their medicines. I would say some mentally ill people especially – it’s very difficult for them, and for ourselves, because a lot of them would tend to come to church.

“I’ve gone myself looking for medicine in my car, going from one pharmacy to another trying to get medication, I’ve gone round several times looking for medicine for some of these people, and I’ve come back often without it. It’s one of the worst areas, I would say, the lack of medicine.”

Beyond such basic material needs, the felt need for the sacraments is if anything more profound now in times of hardship, he adds: “People are still coming, and I would say a bit more.”

Church support is also notable on a national and prophetic level, with figures such as the Archbishop of Caracas, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino having conspicuously spoken up on behalf of the ordinary people.

“They also feel the support of the Church at the local level, and the national level,” Fr Vincent says. “The Church would by far have the greatest prestige in the country with the people. The Church has been very supportive all over the country, really. They’ve been critical in general of the government, and the cardinal especially has been outspoken. “

Unrest in the country may have only hit international headlines this spring when Venezuela’s Supreme Court attempted to abolish the country’s parliament, but difficulties had been building for years.

“The situation with the supreme court and the parliament was one of things that brought it to a head, but it was simmering there the whole time,” says Fr Vincent, noting how government domination over all the instruments of the state have been in place for over 15 years.

Key to the situation, as international observers regularly note, is the collapse in oil prices: President Nicolas Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, had been popular but depended excessively on the country’s oil revenues to enact his plans: with oil, currently 96% of Venezuela’s exports, fetching far less in today’s markets than in the heyday of Chavez, the country’s autocratic government has become increasingly unpopular, while flaws in the socialist strongmen’s policies have become all too clear.

“The expropriation of farms led as well to a lack of home production,” Fr Vincent observes of the flagship policy theoretically intended to break up large farms and make individuals more self-sufficient but in practice a tool of political patronage that reduced agricultural production. “But since the money was there to import there was no big problem from that point of view. But then when the price of petrol went down a few years ago, of course it affected everything.”

Resources

Those with resources to leave – especially young professionals – have been fleeing the country, threatening Venezuela with a future ‘brain drain’, while many thousands of others have simply tried their luck and sought refuge in Brazil, Columbia, and even Peru, raising the spectre of a South American refugee crisis.

“I would say that a lot at the moment have lost hope, and there’s a sense of depression with a lot of people. They don’t see a way forward,” he says, continuing, “That is one of the reasons you need to be with people at this time, in that situation of impotence and fear.”

It’s not always easy to stay put in such situations, of course, as the recent return to Ireland of Fr Joe Ruddy showed – “We don’t have structures for us to remain permanently if we get sick and especially with the current situation,” Fr Vincent observes, grateful that the Irish-led missions are now houses of formation where Venezuelan MSCs are themselves being trained.

In the meantime, though, he is committed to staying put with his fellow Irish missionaries – Cloyne’s Fr Tom O’Brien, Cork City’s Fr John Jennings, and Galway’s Fr Tom Jordan, who like Fr Vincent hails from Skehana. Another veteran of decades in Venezuela, Killarney’s Fr Seamus Kelly has been back in Ireland for a few months, but hopes to return to the missions soon.

The obvious question this invites is why the MSCs feel such commitment to their adopted homes, one that’s often a hallmark of Irish missionaries.

“It’s partly necessity of the moment and the people, Fr Vincent says. “There’s one thing you’ll find more in the Latin American Church than you will find here. Here you’ll find a very professional role of the priest, and he’s changed and he moves on;  there you’ve a much more personal relationship with people, and people are far more attached to the priest, and especially in a crisis like this, one feels more attached.”

Adding that when missionaries are needed they should stay put, whether they’re wanted or not, he admits that right now the MSCs seem to be both necessary and popular in Venezuela.

Supportive

“We have been there for 50 years, and the people have been so good to us over the years,” he says. “We’ve been supportive of them, they’ve been supportive of us – we’ve been very close to the people. And now at this time of need we think that we should continue to support them in a big way as far as we can.

“A lot of people are suffering,” he continues. “When I was going away people were saying to me ‘are you sure you’re coming back?’ People want me to come back. People like me to be there. And I would like to be with them especially in this hour of need to support them in any way we can.”

His view might be personal, but it’s shared by his brother priests, he believes.

“I think my fellow missionaries feel the same way: they want to be of support to the people insofar as they can. We’re Sacred Heart Missionaries – missionaries of the love of Christ – and especially in this moment we try to not alone speak the love of Christ but be the love of Christ of them, be support, be compassion for them.”

It looks like the MSCs will tend to their flock for a while yet.