Trip to Honduras

Our trip to Honduras was in fact “long awaited”. Since our Fall Fiesta was dedicated to helping with the needs in Honduras and we enjoyed the visit of Bishop Sole’ and Padre Gildo, we have been preparing for our visit.

The Dioceses of Trujillo and Dallas have been companion or “sister” dioceses since the time after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Each of the Dioceses in Texas has enjoyed such a relationship with a diocese in Honduras. This was motivated by the emergency situation that all of Honduras suffered following the devastating storm.

Central America was some 9,000. Unofficially, people say that the death toll was much higher, in the neighborhood of 80,000 directly due to the storm and during the 18 months that followed.

Damage to the infrastructure of the country is still evident. Most of the country’s bridges were washed away and there are still temporary bridges spanning rivers. As well, those that have been repaired are showing signs of their being quickly and poorly reconstructed. A huge rainstorm occurred just a few days before our arrival and flooding was evident everywhere. It was a reminder to people of the devastation of some year s ago, which left 500,000 homeless! A more dramatic reminder occurred in October of last year, when rain soaked hills produced another round of killer mudslides throughout Central America.

The economy of the rural areas will undoubtedly take many more years to recover. A great many of the people that we met are subsistence farmers. They have always lived in a fragile balance. A crop failure or a disease among their farm animals can leave them with no recourse. Just as the hurricane killed people, so it also wiped out their livelihood. The government and international aid agencies concentrated their efforts on urban areas. Rural people were quickly forgotten. The World Bank reports that 63% of the country lives on less than $2 per day, and 45% live on less than $1 per day. These statistics are for the whole country. In the countryside, the level of extreme poverty, those living on less than $1 per day, increases to 62%. Honduras is a fragile and vulnerable country that is affected by weather, changes in the global economy as well as the charity of governments and peoples.

The focus of our trip was to rural and small town families. Two parishes were visited, even though to use the word parish here requires some adjustment. Parish organization is a very important part of Catholic life in Honduras. A pastoral plan has been developed that allows for extremely rural areas to receive a lay ministry and education.

For example, a parish is divided into sectors, perhaps as many six or more. Within these are communities, composed of four to a dozen or more families. Within the parish of St. Rita in Sava there are about 70 communities. Within the community is a chapel or meeting place where the people gather on Fridays and Sundays for a liturgy of the Word and catechesis. The priest travels from the central parish church to each of these chapels. He is able to visit them only four or five times each year for Mass and other sacraments. I estimated that Padre Gildo puts about 60,000 miles a year on his four wheel drive truck. The villages are connected by poorly maintained four wheel drive roads.

I think our own experience with economic or employment trouble is that such things are isolating. We pull back from one another in embarrassment or fear. We may also find ourselves withdrawing from involvement with other people out of a sense of survival. We may do the same thing in times of illness or family crisis. This is not the case in Honduras. One of the most dramatically impressive characteristics of the little villages and chapels that we visited was the deep experience of community. People take care of one another to an almost extreme degree. In one community we were told that

they pool all their resources and redistribute them according to their need. I was shocked to hear words from the Acts of the Apostles being lived out. “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need.”
(Acts 2:44-45)

Our meetings with parishioners was very formal at first. Despite the discouragement of poverty and the lack of much more than an elementary education, an introduction of the parish and a detailed discussion was always conducted with great grace. At first, I approached these meetings with a sense of anxiety about how our parish would solve their problems. While those concerns linger, I found myself drawn into an understanding of their life. Even dependent on a translator, I can say without hesitation that I have found new friends. I forgot that they were poor or from another country and language. As Catholics, we were much more than the sum of our differences. We are one Body in the Lord!

There were a number of meetings and gatherings during our trip. We met with members of the leadership of Santa Rita in Saba, which even included music before and after the meal. One of the most dramatic gatherings was with the bishop and all the priests and religious from the diocese. We were reminded by the bishop of the relationship of brotherhood that we are trying to achieve. We shared the Mass together in the largest room of the diocesan retreat and training center. I was struck by the utter simplicity of the offering of the Mass. A tiny little rickety table was the altar and the chalice was donated by a parishioner in Dallas. I hope that for a moment as God looked down on us, that he did not see North Americans

and Central Americans, Hondurans or citizens of the United States, Spanish speakers and English speakers, rich or poor. I hoped that all he could see was his children gathered to worship him.

Realistically, however, I know that this is not the true situation. The reality is that our brothers and sisters in Honduras are in need. We have vast resources to help them and we will not turn on our back on them!