Blogging from El Salvador #5

We attended a joyful Catholic mass at a local parish on the outskirts of San Salvador yesterday. The congregation was full of life; the priest inspirational, charming, and engaging. After the mass, we met with the priest who grew up in El Salvador, entering the seminary in 1983, inspired by Archbishop Romero who had been assassinated three years earlier.  Those were dangerous times when priests were being targeted, but Father Javier (a pseudonym) was not deterred.

Father Javier’s parish engages in health service programs along with the regular services provided by the church. Residents suffer from serious respiratory problems. There also appears to be a high rate of cancer.

The parish lies in the middle of street gang activity as well. The two rival gangs (18th Street and MS-13) are all around, but church and community leaders do their best at try to intervene and provide other options, but the challenges are difficult.

Father Javier notes that even though the current Archbishop of El Salvador does not appear to have the same commitment to combatting poverty and social injustice as Romero did, he at least allows those with commitment to do their work. This means that individuals like Father Javier meet and strategize with like-minded church and community leaders regularly, including the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Baptists. They continue to work from the heart, undeterred by serious structural challenges. They are not afraid to engage in coordinating community groups who organize for social change, even timing certain strategies, for example centered on lack of resources, so that media will cover their efforts.

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