The Catholic Church of Trujillo responds to La Prensa

As we reported in a previous post, the Honduran newspaper La Prensa published an unsourced and completely dubious set of claims, supposedly based on a military intelligence report, accusing campesinos in the Bajo Aguan of being guerrillas and communists. The report, we noted, was incendiary and is the kind of media that leads to and pre-emptively justifies violence.

Included in that press report were frankly incoherent accusations against the Catholic Church in general, and the Jesuit order in specific. Now, thanks to John Donaghy, we can point to a response by the Catholic Church in Trujillo, the diocese that includes the Aguan valley.

It is worth reflecting on the historic position of Trujillo in Honduran Catholicism. Founded in 1525, the town of Trujillo was the first Spanish capital of Honduras. It is widely identified as located where in 1502, Christopher Columbus first set foot on the mainland of the Americas, and where his expedition practiced the first Catholic Mass.

On August 14, 2002, the 500th anniversary of that history was commemorated with a mass on the beach at Trujillo, celebrated by the Archbishop of Santo Domingo and others. The miraculous image of the Virgin of Suyapa, patron saint of Honduras, was brought from Tegucigalpa to solemnize the ceremony.

The document issued by the Diocese of Trujillo specifically objects to passages in La Prensa supposedly citing the "intelligence report" blaming violence on

priests of the Jesuit order who hawk liberation theology in every community

and concluding that

the dominant Catholic order in the department is the Jesuits, followers of liberation theology which is a Marxist vision of the Gospel. Out of this order have come all the guerrilla priests of the Church including Guadalupe Carney.

Father James Carney, priest of the Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus, was killed in 1983 in Honduras by members of the right-wing Battalion 316. The reference to him, in this context, is one that anyone familiar with Honduran history should find extremely disturbing.

Thus, it is heartening to see the Trujillo Diocese write that the Jesuits

have accompanied the poorest families of the department of Colon who for the most part comprise the campesino population, to assist them in the defense of their rights and to attain the goals of their own development.

and that

Integral liberation for which the Jesuit priests and the whole Catholic Church work is not Marxist action nor an action which belongs to a political ideology. It is action inspired by the Gospel which demands that we work against every ideology which manipulates the people. And this is what the Jesuit priests do in our diocese of Trujillo. We are clear about the effort the Jesuit priests make and which the whole diocese does for some eighteen years so that the campesinos do not sell their lands which now are the reason for this violent conflict.

The Trujillo Diocese also objects to the statement in La Prensa, attributed to the apparently fictional "military intelligence" report, that

Authorities of the Catholic Church in the area have strong ties with campesino groups in the department, officially to promote environmental and indigenous groups but it is believed that they are also to strengthen their party (the Christian Democrats).

It should go without saying that the Christian Democrat Party is not an arm of the Catholic Church. But the Diocese considers this statement serious enough to respond to it:

no member of the Hierarchy of the Catholic church in the Diocese of Trujillo, which is composed of the departments of Colón and Gracias a Dios, has any commitment with any political party and therefore not with the Christian Democratic Party

and quoting Pope Benedict notes that

The church is the advocate (lawyer) of justice and the poor precisely by not identifying itself with politician nor with party interests

According to contemporary news reports, in 2002 the representative of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Nicolás López, spoke directly to a group of 1000 members of Honduran indigenous groups who participated in the commemorative mass at Trujillo, telling them

You are specially beloved by God, who is in heaven, and by Christ, our savior... The Pope admires, defends, and makes his own the interests of the ethnicity sprung up here in the beginning of the 16th century... and appreciates your identity and demands that you be recognized by all, principally by those that might hold public power.

The sentiment is one equally appropriate for the campesinos today seeking justice in their search for land from which to support themselves in the Bajo Aguan, many of whom are undoubtedly descendants of the indigenous peoples of Honduras, supported by Catholic clergy who have historically been targets of violence by right-wing forces in Honduras. Let us pray this is not the overture to a repetition of history.

Honduras celebrates its patron saint's day

La Tribuna today carried a story headlined "Bureaucrats will enjoy a holiday to render homage to the Virgin of Suyapa".

In the story, the new minister of Gobernación and Justicia, Áfrico Madrid, is quoted as announcing on national radio that

We ask all the Honduran people, private business, and all the citizenry and people in general, that they take note of this decision of the government of the Republic so that they can carry out their business in the morning, since from midday and on public offices will be closed.

Recall that Honduras' Constitution guarantees as one of the rights of the individual freedom of religion, without any preference of one over another:

ARTICULO 77.- Se garantiza el libre ejercicio de todas las religiones y cultos sin preeminencia alguna, siempre que no contravengan las leyes y el orden público. Article 77.- Free exercise of all religions and forms of worship without any pre-eminence is guaranteed, as long as they do not countervene the law and public order.

So, what makes this religious event so critical that it justifies the violation of this constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion without preference for one?

Nuestra Señora de Concepción de Suyapa is a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary, made of cedar, and just 6.5 centimeters tall. Pope Pius XI declared her the "Patroness of Honduras" in 1925 and established her feast day as February 3, moving the celebration, which had been February 2 (Candelaria).

The statue was reportedly discovered in mid-January or early February 1747 by a laborer, Alejandro Colindres, who was returning from clearing family cornfields on Piliguin mountain, outside of Tegucigalapa. Because he stayed working too late, darkness fell as he was coming down off the mountain, and he was forced to sleep outdoors. Colindres was awakened by a sharp pain in the side, and discovered that he was sleeping on something. (Later versions of the story claim that without looking at it, Colindres threw it as far away as he could, only to find it underneath him as he lay down again. This detail is not present in early versions of the story.)

The next morning, Colindres discovered that what had bothered him during the night was a small statue of the Virgin Mary, which he took home to his mother's house in the small town of Suyapa, 7 kilometers outside of Tegucigalpa.

For the next 20 years it remained in their home, on their family altar. In 1768, the statue was credited with its first recognized miracle, curing José de Zelaya y Midence, owner of the nearby Hacienda Trapiche, of kidney stones, and it began to attract public attention. With the attention came money, and the family was able to construct a small chapel for the statue, completed in 1777. (Records held in the Archivo Eclesiastico de Comayagua, which burned in 2008, provided information about the people who contributed labor and materials for the construction of the chapel.)

Since 1768, many others have attested to miracles performed by the Virgin. Perhaps the most well known is the report that she comforted Honduran soldiers during the 1969 Soccer War with El Salvador.

In the 1950s, work began on a new Basilica for Nuestra Señora de Concepción de Suyapa next to the chapel, and it was inaugurated in 2004. The image spends most of the year in the chapel, inside a glass case, but is moved to the Basilica during January and February to accommodate the large crowds of pilgrims from all over Honduras and Central America. The statue has a group of male, lay caretakers called the Order of the Gentlemen of Suyapa (Orden de los Caballeros de Suyapa), founded in the 20th century, that accompany the statue whenever it leaves the chapel to travel around Honduras, as it often does in February.

The statue of the Virgin of Suyapa, at 6.5 centimeters tall, is the smallest miraculous statue or image that I know of in Latin America. By comparison, the next smallest is the statue of Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles, in Cartago, Costa Rica, which is 20 centimeters tall. That statue, reportedly carved of stone or dark wood, was also miraculously found in the 18th century.

The statue of Our Lady of Suyapa has been stolen twice. In 1986 it was stolen and stripped of its gold, silver, and jewels, and left in the men's room of the restaurant La Terrraza de Don Pepe in Tegucigalpa.

The celebration at the Basilica will last for a week, with the largest crowds anticipated on February 5.

One group in Honduras has a special devotion to Suyapa: the Armed Forces, for whom she is described as a "captain". On February 1, as reported by the Honduran press, the leaders of the Armed Forces, accompanied by Porfirio Lobo Sosa, attended a mass in honor of Suyapa, at which the sermon emphasized the valor of the Armed Forces. The auxiliary bishop of Tegucigalpa, Juan José Pineda, who presided, ended by giving Romeo Vasquez Velasquez a wooden shield symbolic of his defense of the country.