HONDURAS: Holy Mission

Anticlericalism was for more than a century the prime tenet of the Liberal parties that flourished in Latin America; Liberals effectively broke the Roman Catholic Church’s vast temporal powers. Not destroyed was a great religious hunger. Last week in Honduras, a Liberal President, Ramón Villeda Morales, was treating the republic to the greatest wave of Catholic revivalism that the tiny, primitive country (pop. 1,800,000) ever saw.

Six weeks ago, Villeda Morales joined Tegucigalpa Archbishop Emilio Morales Roque in dedicating the nation to both the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary—making his the first government anywhere to take the two pledges simultaneously.* Since then, a task force of more than 100 priests has traveled the jungles of southern Honduras on a “Holy Mission”: bringing the sacraments to a neglected people.

Some villagers had not seen a priest for years. At tiny Tesciguot, 40 men on mules trotted out to meet Father José Maria López, firing their pistols into the air and shouting, “Viva la Iglesia Católica! Viva Jesucristo!” In mass ceremonies, the padre married 240 couples within three hours, aided by the government’s special dispensation of the $12 license fee. Bathing in rivers, living on tortillas and beans, Father Jorge Toruno visited 17 towns, spoke to 30,000 people and married 1,139 couples, two-thirds of whom had never been to confession or communion. In the capital, Tegucigalpa, the task force of priests distributed communion to 67,000 people and married 1,500 couples.

Formal religion in Honduras, the priests admit frankly, is in deplorable disrepair. Priests said that some 85% of all Honduran children are born out of wedlock. Three illegitimate children per father is “the rule,” but ten is “not unusual.” Dismayed when one group of children met with blank faces his question, “How many Gods are there?”, he was downright horrified when the local schoolteacher coached in a stage whisper: “Five.”

After a swing through northern and western Honduras, 45 priests (from nine religious orders in six Latin American countries and Spain), who came to reinforce the local clergy, will move on next month to prepare for a similar blitz effort in neighboring Nicaragua. Said President Villeda Morales: “We reiterate our determination to put into divine hands the destiny of Honduras.” Pope John XXIII declared that from the new dedication “the graces of heaven have been falling in torrents on your souls.”

*Both dedications, inspired by two 17th century French saints, require Vatican approval, and entail a preparatory period by faithful Catholics of daily Mass and special instructions in church doctrine. Dedicated by their governments to the Sacred Heart: Ecuador (the first, in 1873), Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Brazil, Peru, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Malta and the Philippines. Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart: Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ireland, Belgium and Spain.