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Overview
Of The CFR Honduran Mission
Convento San Serafin, Barrio Francisco Morazan, Apartado 331 Comayagua, Comayagua, Honduras, Centro America 504-772-7998 October 2001 |
Honduras is located south of Guatemala which is directly below Mexico. It’s
kind of on the “elbow” of Central
America, giving it the unique quality of having an Atlantic coast in the north
and a Pacific coast in the south.
Relatively unknown until recently by Americans, Honduras was “put on the map”,
so to speak, by the tragedy
Hurricane Mitch in 1998 which took thousands of lives and did millions of
dollars of damage. Many Americans,however, are very familiar with some of
Honduras’ most important crops and products: bananas and other fruitsexported
by Dole and Chiquita and clothing manufactured in many of the country’s maquilas,
with the tell tale label, “Made in Honduras.”
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Honduras
is roughly about the size of the state of Tennessee and has a population of
about six million. It is one ofthe poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Some statistics will give an idea. In 1999 Honduras had a grossnational product
(the total market value of all the goods and services produced by a nation
during a year) of $856per person, compared to $32,778 per person for the United
States. Eighty percent of the population earns less than$800 a year, $60 a
month, $15 a week. The most recent report of the United Nations Development
Program revealed that 40.5% of the Honduran population lives on less than
a dollar a day. Life expectancy is about 10 years less than in the United
States. The infant mortality rate is about 40 per 1000 live births compared
to 7 for the US. About 40% of the population is under 15 while only 3% are
over 65. The average Honduran can be expected to complete about 9 years of
school, compared to 16 in the United States; 25% of the adult population is
illiterate. Most of the people live in single room houses with dirt floors
and no electricity or running water. Hondurans average 2.2 people per room,
whereas Americans average half a person per room.
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The Honduran people are characterized by a kind of noble simplicity,
warmth and friendliness. Life can be primitive here, in both the positive
and negative senses of that word. There are segments of the population that
can be violent. There is a unique Honduran culture that manifests itself in
artwork, music and food, but it more basic and less developed adorned than
in some of the other Latin American countries. Because of their material and
cultural poverty Hondurans cling tenaciously to any symbol of national pride
or identity whether that be the national soccer team attempting to qualify
for the World Cup, a native born Cardinal of the Church or Our Lady of Suyapa,
patroness of Honduras. In a way Our lady Of Suyapa sums up and represents
the Honduran people. She’s a tiny little statue, only 6cm tall, carved out
of cedar that was miraculously discovered by a campesino laborer as he slept
out in the open in a dry river bead on the way back home from working in the
fields. There were no words, no apparitions, only a tiny figure with silent
beauty and humble dignity.
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We do our best to “inculture” the life of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal here in Honduras. Like everybody else, we get up a little bit earlier and go to bed a little bit earlier than we might do in the United States. We try to approximate the lives of our neighbors by eating and living simply. We raise pigs and rabbits and chickens and ducks (not to mention the cats and dogs, and the iguanas that live in the roof of the chapel) so as to have purchase as little meat as possible. Br. Juan Diego is our chief farm hand. As well, we have some very generous benefactors connected to the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, an hour and a half away, thanks be to God. We travel in to say Mass for them in English once a month, and they travel out to Comayagua once a month to help pack food (rice, beans, corn and sugar) for the 80 families we help to support. Our most regular benefactor, however, is Enriqueta, one of our poor neighbors who sends 50 corn meal tortillas every day. Br. Leopald works with many of the boys of the neighborhood; they are his construction helpers on the building project. We are in the process of reconfiguring the friary and are just completing the cloister with 14 small new cells and a large common bathroom for the friars. The next step is reconstruct the front, public area of the friary (were the bedrooms were previously located) to include a larger dining room and a library /classroom as well as a couple of smaller rooms for visitors, meetings and storage. After that there are tentative plans to construct a dormitory for younger student candidates, and a community center on land adjacent to friary to extend our work with family’s in the neighborhood. In the mean time, Br. Leopald also works on a number of “home improvement” projects (mostly new roofs to keep out the rain) for our very poor neighbors. We are also in the process of sponsoring a housing initiative for 66 families in a remote mountain village three hours away. Two of us, a priest and a brother, travel up there once a month for four days to work with the families, visit with them and offer them moral and spiritual support. Thanks to the hard work of Br. Stephen and some of our friends at the Embassy the Us military will soon airlift by helicopter more than 7000 sheets of corrugated zinc for the roofs of the 66 homes. That will save many truck trips on rough and dangerous roads a lot of time. We recently helped to organize a medical mission for a surgical team from Florida called the Light of the World. Over the course of a week they performed 60 operations on very poor people for things like clept lips and palates, burn scars, cataracts and other eye difficulties. The trip was so successful and the need so great they want to return in a few months for another mission, and there’s even talk about constructing a hospital here for the poor.
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At times it’s a little hard to be so far from friars, family, friends and
home, in a different culture with a different language. But its exciting to
see a little pocket of the kingdom of God taking shape before our very eyes,
giving hope and encouragement to people who labor under the burden of many
disadvantages, and to see our own community taking root and beginning to bear
fruit in vocations.
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Financial
contributions to support the CFR mission in Honduras can be sent to:
CFR Honduras Mission c/o Saint Felix Friary 15 Trinity Plaza Yonkers,NY 10701 914-476-7279 |