Priests in Honduras provide great bang for the buck

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Few countries rival Honduras in terms of bang for the buck” from its priests. This is a nation of 5,785,000 Catholics with just over 400 priests, resulting in a national priest-to-baptized person ratio of 1 to 14,462. (In comparatively priest-rich North America, by way of contrast, the ratio is 1 to 1,229.)

At the last Synod of Bishops in Rome, Bishop Roberto Camilleri Azzopardi of Comayagua made international headlines when he reported that the priest-to-person ratio was 1 to 16,000. But in fact, Azzopardi has it lucky compared to his colleagues in the dioceses of Santa Rosa de Copàn, where the ratio is 1 to 20,172, or Juticalpa, where it’s 1 to 26,218.

While these astronomic imbalances create enormous challenges – among other things, many people says the rapid growth of Pentecostalism in Honduras is due, at least in part, to the shortage of Catholic clergy – perhaps the most immediate consequence is that Honduran priests carry work-loads that seem Herculean by the standards of many other parts of the world.

I’m in Honduras this week as the guest of Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, as part of the research for my book on “Mega-Trends in Catholicism.” To tell the truth, I get tired just listening to a typical Honduran priest describe his day.

Take, for example, Fr. Ricardo Flores, pastor of San Jose Obrero parish in a typical residential neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, the national capital.

At San Jose Obrero, Flores is responsible not just for the life of this large urban parish, but for 14 other churches scattered throughout the surrounding area that have no resident priest. All told, his parish community encompasses around 150,000 people, which in other contexts might constitute its own diocese. In theory, six other priests are supposed to be on call part-time to help him, but two recently moved on to other assignments. The remaining four all have other duties in schools, parishes and other institutions across the country.

In addition, Flores is the national priest-director for the John XXIII Movement, a popular Catholic group in Central America and the Caribbean which has 5,000 members in Honduras. Its aim is to evangelize the marginalized, both in the church and in society.

Beyond that, Flores is also a professor at the seminary in Tegucigalpa, teaching a full load of four courses each semester for around 60 students. During the first semester, he teaches Mariology, Christology, Patristics and Ecclesiology; in the second semester, he teaches additional sections of Christology and Ecclesiology as well as courses in Holy Orders and Eschatology. To top things off, Flores is also the spiritual director for seven seminarians.

I asked Flores what a typical day looks like:

5:00 am – Awake for prayers and preparations for the day
6:30 am – At the seminary for breakfast with colleagues and meetings
8:00 am – Courses begin
12:30 pm – Lunch at the seminary
1:30 pm – Game of basketball with the seminarians
3:00 pm – Office time at the parish
6:00 pm – Evening Mass at the parish
7:00 pm – Meetings with various groups in the parish
9:30 pm – Return to residence, where people are always lined up for counseling, help, confessions, etc.
11:30 pm – Lights out

That schedule, of course, has to be taken with the caveat that with so many different irons in the fire, no day for Flores is ever really “typical.”

Just to make the point that he’s not an isolated case, consider Fr. Rigoberto Velasquez of Cristo Rey Parish in the Tegucigalpa neighborhood of 21 de Octubre. Like Flores, he’s responsible not merely for his large parish community, but for seven satellite churches which collectively are responsible for roughly 94,000 faithful.

Velasquez visits each of those seven churches at least twice a week for Mass and to hear confessions, and he’s also constantly on call to visit the sick and the bereaved. In addition, each of the seven churches has its own parish council, which meets every two weeks, and Velasquez attends all of those meetings.

In addition to that, Velasquez is also the “Vicar for Pastoral Care” for the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, which means that he oversees liturgy, social justice efforts, social services, and virtually every other aspect of ordinary ecclesial life which could be regarded as “pastoral.” He directs the “Archdiocesan Commission for Pastoral Care,” known here as “CAP.”

Velasquez said that this work consumes about 5 days each month in day-long meetings, in addition to a regular stream of phone calls, letters, and messages to which he has to respond. There’s also a regular national meeting for pastoral strategy which he has to help prepare and lead.

Or, consider Fr. Juan Angel Lopez, pastor of two parishes in another region of Tegucigalpa, Santo Domingo Saviano and San Juan Diego, which together encompass some 18,000 people. Lopez is also a professor at the seminary, where he teaches Church history, Latin American church history, Honduran history, Ethics and Ecumenism roughly 100 students. He also teaches at the Catholic University in Honduras, offering courses in Social Doctrine, Ethics and Honduran history to some 150 students.

Beyond that, Lopez is the dean of the priests in his deanery, as well as the national sponsor for a group of Honduran Catholic entrepreneurs called “Jebroca.” To top it all off, Lopez also has regular programs on Honduran radio and TV. All together, he estimates that he works somewhere between 16 and 18 hours a day.

I asked Flores, 38, Velasquez, 41, and Lopez, 35, if they feel overworked.

Flores said that as a young priest, he got to know an auxiliary bishop in Tegucigalpa who worked from the crack of dawn, visiting little towns in the surrounding area, until late at night when he made himself available in his office, and yet seemed always to be smiling.

“For me, this was the model,” Flores said. “He took real pleasure in being of service to others. This was how to be happy.”

Velasquez said much the same thing.

“It’s not too heavy a burden if one feels happiness every day, in almost everything he does,” he said.

Yet Velasquez conceded that on a human level, sometimes the multiple demands placed upon priests in such a situation can be “too much” – especially, he said, when on top of everything else, priests are dragged into public service.

“Every time there’s a crisis and the government decides to set up a commission, they want someone to represent the church,” Velasquez said. He cited a recent commission set up by the Honduran government to address a chronic energy crisis in the country. He said priests often end up being placed on these commissions in order to provide a signal that someone will be looking out for the public interest – a necessary task, he said, but it puts a serious drain on their already taxed time and energy.

Velasquez said this happened to him once, when conflicts between the police and the people of his neighborhood threatened to turn ugly, and he was asked to mediate. It was an important service, he said, but it made an already heavy burden of work almost impossible to bear.

Lopez says that despite the workload, priestly morale remains high.

“I’ve never heard anyone complain about how much work they have to do,” he said. “We’ve known since the seminary that we would be wearing different hats.” Lopez said his main concern is that he has too little time to pray.

All three priests conceded, however, that these may be the responses of relatively young men, and that it’s difficult to know how they’ll feel forty years from now.

Rodriguzez Maradiaga told me he’s optimistic that the upcoming CELAM meeting in Brazil in May will address this reality, pushing the church in the direction of a new pastoral model which relies on laity rather as well as priests to carry out a broad swath of ecclesial activity – for example, catechesis, faith formation, evangelization, and management of church institutions.

For what it’s worth, the three Honduran priests said they’d be thrilled to see that outcome – especially, they added, if it means work days of 12 rather than 16 or 18 hours.