Padre Patricio inspires a passion for mission
Gerard Gough
PERU is one of the countries that have been hit hardest by the Coronavirus pandemic. Despite the government moving quickly to impose curfews and strict border controls, at the time of writing, there has been more than 600,000 cases and in excess of 28,000 deaths.
“The poorest people are suffering,” Fr Pat Hennessy said. “There are people in Peru who can’t get access to oxygen because it’s too expensive—it’s out of their reach. The price of everything related to Covid-19 has gone through the roof. The pandemic is really hurting them.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has had the pleasure of sitting down and chatting with a priest or religious sister who has spent time on mission that they still have a great love and concern for the people they served and the country to which they were sent.
However, while Peru—especially its more rural parts—and its people still hold a very special place in the heart of Fr Pat (above), it was the countryside of the Emerald Isle where he discerned his vocation thanks, in no small part to the influences that surrounded him at the time. Born in Limerick in 1945, Fr Pat became extremely close to the grandfather he was named after and this relationship was to prove pivotal in his faith journey.
“He was a farmer,” Fr Pat said. “We were great pals, really big mates. We were an old fashioned family, we used to have a horse and buggy and we’d trot up to Mass with me holding the reins and him laughing and joking away, but when you went into Church he’d change completely. I thought to myself his faith makes a real difference to his life.”
Inspired by his grandfather’s example, imbued with an acute sense of right and wrong—or fair play to use his own words—and having a classmate of his decide to become a priest, Fr Pat began to consider the priesthood for himself.
“God calls you, no matter whether you’re a layperson or religious,” he said. “The brothers at the school I was at were keen to point that out. They’d tell us that God was calling each one of us to do different things. Three of us became priests, one of whom is in Nairobi, Kenya, and we maintain contact to this day and are good friends. I still love it and I’m really pleased that I decided to become a priest.”
Ordained and sent
Fr Pat was ordained in 1969. Despite having a desire to leave his homeland and go out on mission it was Lanarkshire—not the mountains around Lima—that was his first home away from home. After some sage advice from his granny, he quickly set about immersing himself in the life of his Scottish parish—and current residence—St Columbkille’s in Rutherglen.
“My granny said when I was ordained ‘so you’re a priest now, I suppose you think you’re a great fella? When you begin to believe that you’ll be in trouble!’ Good advice! When I came here I got very attached to the people. In those days you were never in the house, you were always out and about and you knew everybody.”
After spending five years in St Columbkille’s, Fr Pat moved on to St James, Coatbridge, with teaching posts at Langbank and Blairs Colleges and a few years spent in Our Lady’s and St Anne’s in Hamilton for good measure. However, his desire to serve God’s people further afield was always in his thinking. He had raised the matter with the late Bishop Francis Thomson first before eventually being granted the opportunity by the late Bishop Joseph Devine.
“I had read a bit about Pope John XXIII and how he’d said that he’d like to send priests to Latin America, as they didn’t have many priests there—70 per cent of the world’s Catholics lived there and were served by 11 per cent of the world’s priests. I had said to the Bishop [Devine] would there be the possibility of me going there and he said ‘yes.’ However, he asked if I would go to Our Lady and St Anne’s first. After a couple of years I asked him again and he told me to contact the St James Society in Boston. So I had an interview over there and they said ‘yes you’d fit in quickly and have some use down there.’ So on Christmas Day, 1988, I left the parish and said I’d be away for a while. Two weeks later I was in Ecuador.”
Despite thinking he was going to become a priest in the Altiplano near Lake Titicaca, his countryside background in Ireland saw him posted to a mountain parish north of Lima, where he was to spend his 10 and a half years in Peru and where he was made Episcopal Vicar of the Countryside by his bishop! As he reflected on those early days on mission, Fr Pat spoke of the qualities that a missionary had to possess to ensure that their ministry was a success.
“A missionary has to place great importance on prayer and to be happy—and the two are connected,” he said. “One of the older sisters said to me ‘Paddy if you didn’t pray before you came here, when you go up into the mountains you will because you won’t be able to tell anyone else how you feel but God will know and you’ll know that He knows. If that happens to you then you’ll just become a happy person.’
“It’s important to note too that a missionary isn’t necessarily there to bring God to the people. God is already there. You have to discover that they already experience God and help bring that out. You need to spend a great deal of time with them, show solidarity with them and enjoy it all too.
“I think everyone is a missionary. You’re a missionary of what is going on in your heart. You live from the inside out—I’ve always liked that expression. If you’re a friend of God, you’ll see things through His eyes. I would tell people that God loves them and when they get that into their heads and hearts they’ll take care of one another.”
Testing times
Yet despite his optimistic outlook on mission, he is honest enough to admit that there were times he felt scared. Shortly after his arrival in the country, the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) paramilitary group—whose aim was to overthrow the government—killed two Polish Franciscan priests and one Italian missionary priest. Michał Tomaszek and Zbigniew Adam Strzałkowski were murdered on August 9, 1991 and Alessandro Dordi was killed shortly after on August 25 of the same year. Pope Francis gave approval on February 3, 2015 for their Beatification after affirming their martyrdom and Cardinal Angelo Amato celebrated their Beatification in Peru on December 5, 2015. They are known as the Blessed Martyrs of Chimbote and a picture of the trio (above) sits on the mantelpiece in Fr Pat’s living room to serve as a reminder of the sacrifice made by his fellow missionaries while serving the faithful in Peru.
“I was sacred all right and fear can paralyse you,” he said. “We were always told that if things became traumatic for us, we’d have to come home, but I think you have to try and conquer fear.
“One of the things the government used to do to frighten people was to come into a town, block off the streets and take maybe 10 young fellas out into the country and shoot them. One of my fellow priests said to me one day, ‘Paddy you have this jeep don’t you?’ I said ‘yeah.’ He said ‘look 10 of my young people have been taken away by the army. I think I know where they’re buried, will you come with me to trawl the desert?’ I said ‘yeah ok, but you do know that if we discover them, we’ll be put in beside them!’ So we drove around and couldn’t find them. Then a couple of years later he called me and said ‘I know where they are.’ Their garments had appeared above the sand and we discovered that they were there, beside the road. So that was kind of scary stuff, but you couldn’t not do things.
“Sendero Luminoso had said they that they would kill more foreign priests and I was practically liv