Christ the King Church in Little Rock will continue to make two trips a year to Honduras in spite of increased violence in the region.
Drug trafficking and gang violence are on the rise in the Central American country.
The parish began a medical mission to the Diocese of Trujillo in 1996 and later added construction, education and evangelization projects. Last summer the missionaries served 4,900 people, providing 1,400 pairs of glasses and 22 hearing aids and extracting 717 teeth. The mission regularly operates three village clinics, a dental clinic and eye clinic in addition to providing about 60 surgeries. One or two Hondurans with extensive medical needs are brought to Little Rock each year for surgeries or prosthetics through the donations of frequent flyer miles, lodging and hospitals.
In 2010 the church decided to expand its summer mission for 95 missionaries to include a spring break trip in March for 20 people, mainly focused on construction, evangelization and education.
 Catholics rally around amputee to change life Click here |
On Feb. 12, pastor Msgr. Francis I. Malone announced that the parish would continue to serve the country but acknowledged that some missionaries might want to withdraw from the trip. Bishop Luis Sole Fa of Trujillo visited Little Rock Feb. 6 to 9 to talk to parish leaders and reaffirm that if conditions in his diocese were too dangerous for the missionaries he would alert them immediately. Hector Mendoza, the local mission director, also visited Little Rock to prepare for the coming missions.
The decision to continue the Christ the King missions came after the U.S. Peace Corps announced it was withdrawing all 158 volunteers Feb. 6.
“We do not want to abandon this mission,” Msgr. Malone said. “There are dangers no matter where you go.”
In 2005 the parish cancelled its March mission trip three months after 28 local people were murdered and 20 others were injured on a bus on the same road that the Christ the King missionaries would travel from the airport outside San Pedro Sula to Trujillo. That year Msgr. Malone accompanied a small group of missionaries to the region for the episcopal ordination of Bishop Sole and got to see firsthand where the missionaries work.
The pastor said canceling the mission was possible, but this year there was not definitive information about the local conditions in Trujillo. Bishop Sole told the pastor the conditions in Trujillo and the surrounding villages where the missionaries work is the same as previous years.
“In his opinion it was perfectly safe,” said Sandee Haslauer, the parish’s mission director.
Msgr. Malone met with the mission board and the missionaries Feb. 12 to discuss the concerns and let the missionaries, who pay their own way to go to Honduras, decide if they still wanted to travel into the country. So far only 15 of the 116 missionaries scheduled for both missions have cancelled, but some made the decision to withdraw because of personal reasons, Haslauer said.
According to the Associated Press, “A recent U.N. report said Honduras and El Salvador have the highest homicide rates in the world with 82.1 and 66 per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively, in 2010. Guatemala had a rate of 41 per 100,000 last year. All three are more than double the homicide rate of 18 per 100,000 in Mexico, where drug violence has drawn world attention.”
The Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice recently ranked San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the world’s most violent city, with a murder rate of 158 per 100,000 residents.
In the Diocese of Trujillo, Catholic News Service reported most of the fighting took place in a territory known as Bajo Aguan on the large palm plantations near Tocoa. Father Felipe Lopez, pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish in Trujillo, said at least 40 to 50 people were killed in the conflict last summer over land claimed by both peasant farmers and three wealthy landowners in the region. The violence has mostly been among hired security guards of privately owned plantations, the Honduran military and members of two local peasant groups, many of whom have taken up arms.
“Weapons in this region are a grave problem,” Bishop Sole Fa of Trujillo told CNS. “They are almost part of the local culture.”
Bishop Sole said the conflict over land reform in the Bajo Aguan has been amplified by regional drug cartels that finance various groups in the land reform struggle, supplying illegal heavy artillery.
Haslauer, mission director for the past eight years, said she is prepared to lead nine missionaries March 17-25 and another 92 missionaries June 9-17.
“I think a lot of people are interested in what we have to say when we return from the mission in March,” Haslauer said. If the conditions are not favorable, “we will just cancel the mission in June,” she said.
The usual preparation for the mission continued last week. On Feb. 17, the parish sent a shipping container full of furniture and supplies to Honduras. Christ the King asks its parishioners to donate $75,000 annually to help operate the mission, which includes shipping three containers to Honduras with supplies, buying medicine and maintaining the schools and churches built by the missionaries. Additional money is raised for special projects, such as building a church or renovating a school building.
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa said the current violence in Honduras is the result of “the impact of narco-business subculture, unstoppable migration and of religious confusion, a result of the invasion of sects,” according to a Feb. 6 report by Fides, the Vatican missionary news agency.
The cardinal made his comments Feb. 3 during the 265th anniversary celebration of the discovery of the Virgin of Suyapa, the patroness of Honduras. Attending the event was Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, government ministers, top legislators, heads of the judicial branches, local authorities, and thousands of Catholics from around the country.
The cardinal said that the country was bleeding and mortally wounded by violence, growing poverty, a lack of respect for life and corruption among police, reported Fides.
It was a difficult yet “urgent imperative,” the cardinal said, to purge corruption from the national police force, which has been accused of a number of crimes and misdemeanors, according to Fides. The news agency said the government was conducting a corruption sweep of the nation’s police, judges and prosecutors.
The Central American nation has 8.2 million inhabitants. Daily violence accounts for an average of 20 deaths per day, according to human rights organizations and the local press.
Catholic News Service contributed to this story.
Catholics rally around amputee to change life
Honduran Jesus Garcia’s life for the past six years has been limited after he lost both arms when he was pushed from a train.
Sandee Haslauer, the mission director for Christ the King Church in Little Rock, first met Garcia, 26, in March 2011 when she was introduced to him by an American citizen living in Honduras. Haslauer knew that if she could get Garcia at least one prosthetic arm he would become more independent. In June 2011 the parish mission returned and Garcia met with orthopedist Dr. Laura Hughes. Hughes asked parishioner Mike Horton of Horton Orthotics in Little Rock if he would fit the young man with an arm.
“For the last six years he couldn’t brush his teeth, dress himself, feed himself,” Haslauer said.
With the donation of airfare and housing, Garcia was brought to Little Rock Feb. 12. Horton made a mold for Garcia’s right arm, which was amputated below the elbow. On Feb. 18 the heavy-duty prosthetic was placed on Garcia for the first time. This week Garcia remained in Little Rock to meet with an occupational therapist to learn how to use the prosthetic and do basic functions.
Haslauer said she believes the mission will be even more effective in Honduras because Mike Horton and his brother Chris are attending the missions in March and June for the first time and will set up an orthotics lab and recycle old prosthetics that are no longer usable in the United States.
“There are hundreds of amputees in Honduras, many more than in the United States,” Haslauer said.
