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Our newly-elected Pope, Leo XIV, spent many years working in Peru. Pope Leo worked in Chulucanas, Piura, Peru (1985–1986) and Tas director of the joint formation project for Augustinian candidates from the vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos, and Apurímac. From 2013 to 2014 he served in his home Augustinian province in Chicago but returned to Peru, to the Diocese of Chiclayo in 2014 and on 26 September 2015, he was appointed Bishop of Chiclayo by Pope Francis.

Chulucanas and Chiclayo are neighbouring dioceses in the north-west of Peru, and working in the Diocese of Chulucanas over those years were Fr Hugh Dutton, Fr Benny O’Shea and Fr Ian Byrnes from our Diocese of Arundel & Brighton, which has a long connection with this region of Peru. In 2020, after his return to the UK, Fr Hugh Dutton kindly wrote an account of his years serving there, from the end of 1981 to October 2019, for Vinculum, the Ministry to Priests Newsletter.

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It’s quite a long time really: thirty-eight years and I can’t think where all that time has gone as it sped by so quickly. It’s jolly difficult to know where to start really however here goes.

Just after his ordination as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton in 1977, Bishop Cormac was looking for volunteers to go out to South America to strengthen the link already established by Fathers Michael MacGlade, Eddie O’Shea and Fr (as he was then) Brendan McCarthy in Chile, and Fathers John Medcalf and Kevin McHugh in Peru. The only two, as far as I know, who expressed interest were myself and Fr Jeremy Lear, who was Bishop Cormac’s secretary at the time. I was serving as curate in Thames Ditton having been ordained in 1978.

At first, Bishop Cormac said to me: “Certainly not, you’ve been ordained only two years!” but then as no one else expressed interest apart from Jeremy, he decided to let me go. It was decided that Jeremy and I would serve in the Diocese of Chulucanas which is right up in the north-west of Peru on the Ecuadorian border for at least four years. The reason was that the incumbent bishop at the time, John McNabb OSA had a pastoral plan in process in the diocese.

In 1964 what was then the Prelature of Chulucanas was carved out of the neighbouring diocese of Piura to the west with a group of American Augustinian friars, which included the first bishop, coming down from the States to set up the new jurisdiction. There were already a very few native priests working in the then prelature.

On 31 of December 1981, Jeremy and I took off from Gatwick to Lima with a stop off in Puerto Rico. We arrived in Lima in time for the New Year, arriving in Lima at 11.30pm on 31 December. Unfortunately, our cases had not been on the aircraft. What a great start! But we drove with Kevin McHugh in the streets of Lima amongst the bangings, explosions and whizzings of fireworks all over the place in the streets of Lima, seeing in 1982.

Kevin drove us to Maryknoll language school to learn a bit of Spanish for four months. After [that] our first parish in Peru, San Ramon, was in the city of Chulucanas itself, and Jeremy and I, served there as curates for a year. Chulucanas is a fairly large city of about 57,000 inhabitants with two other parishes besides San Ramon.

It was quite a baptism of fire, with a great host of things I had to get used to. One of those was having to accustom myself to a whole new mentality and way of going about things which totally went against my own set of one-two-three, yes-and-no, black and white, way of doing things. If we organized a meeting for 4pm we were lucky if it started by 4.45 or even 5 pm. People would sort of wander in late in ones, or twos or threes, which clearly didn’t matter to them one bit. Even while the meeting was in progress they would say “good afternoon, everyone” and proceed to go round all those present shaking hands! Then with a bit of luck we may have been able to get on with a bit more of the meeting until the next lot of late comers arrived repeating the same procedure. There were so many things to get used to; the food, tummy upsets, the terrible endless noise, horns blasting away all the time at the slightest excuse, all night parties going with “music” so loud that it made my windows rattle and made sleeping impossible!

One thing I never really got used to was the terrific heat and accompanying humidity. In the summer (mid November to April) in the north west, the temperatures would be around 40°C and in the winter (May to November) it would be a tolerable 22°C. In the mountains, the temperatures weren’t so bad, it was less hot, cold at night, and no humidity. In that part of Peru there is no such thing as four distinct seasons: it’s just summer, very hot; and winter, not too hot and cool in the mornings.

The people are lovely though, friendly and laid back, quite amazingly patient and long-suffering and somehow always positive and cheerful often in the face of the gravest difficulties. Poverty being the main concern of the vast majority of people and their daily struggle of finding ways to survive and carry on.

The other great worry for them was healthcare. There is no equivalent in Peru of our National Health Service and although there is some kind of very basic health insurance, in practice it was totally insufficient and often the people wouldn’t get the money back for medicines or operations they needed. Often the money just could not be obtained and people would die unnecessarily from illnesses which normally could have been treated if the money had been available.

Their Catholic faith also is interesting. Imported by the Spanish and imposed sometimes quite ruthlessly by the Spanish conquistadores it is still something innate and deep in the psyche of the people. For a long time the native people were not considered suitable to be ordained so when, after independence, many of the Spanish clergy left the country, the people were left more or less to organize what they could to both celebrate and keep their faith, so there developed what is known as “the popular religion”.

This would, and still does, consist mainly in celebrating the patronal feast of the town or village by carrying the statue of their patron in procession through the town, singing religious songs, praying the rosary, letting fireworks off, scattering rose petals and shouting “Viva San Ramon” or “Viva Santa Rosa” or “Viva” whoever the patron of the town happened to be with the people responding “Que vivaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!” and clapping and letting off another rocket!!

I remember once in one of the mountain parishes, a rocket going off in the middle of the Señor de los Ramos procession, and the rocket instead of going up went zigagging through the people. They sort of scattered but they didn’t seem to mind too much; it was all part of the celebration!! Señor de los Ramos is the pre-Mass procession through the town of a statue of the Lord, or sometimes a real boy sitting on a real donkey enacting the Lord’s triumphal entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And as the donkey and boy approach the church, the people throw down their palms, which are big real palm branches and a garment or two in front of the beast and boy as they enter the church.

For these patronal feasts, if a priest can be available to celebrate a Mass before the procession then well and good. But with the great shortage of priests still, about one priest per 20,000 or so people in the diocese, a Mass isn’t always possible but the procession and all its accompanying activities will always still go ahead. The people will celebrate their feast, Mass or no Mass, priest or no priest!

One of the consequences of all this is [a lack of understanding] of the truths of the faith, of what the sacraments are and mean, and lack of interest in the Eucharist. I remember celebrating Holy Week in a mountain parish in another diocese; the whole town turned out for the various Holy Week processions complete with statues: Jesus in the tomb, Jesus with his cross, the meeting of Mary with Mary Magdelene, the risen Jesus, and various others, but there were just about four or five people at the Holy Week liturgies!

Because of the shortage of priests, the vast distances, the huge parishes and an almost non-existent infrastructure, a pastoral plan was introduced by the bishop, whereby the people would have the resources necessary to be able to celebrate the faith in each village or town at least on a Sunday with a small village team responsible for the spiritual and material care of the people.

There would be an elected “zone team” which would take care of the Sunday prayers, organise support for anyone in dire financial need, a catechist for baptism, confirmation, confession and first Holy Communion preparation, a secretary, a coordinator and deputy and someone in charge of distributing relevant information. The priest or priests who live in the principal town of the parish visit each village in turn, section by section accompanied by one or two of the religious sisters, if there are any in the parish.

Some go out for anything up to three weeks or a month going from village to village, on mule-back or walking, to celebrate the Eucharist, baptisms, anointings, marriages, confessions and blessings of everything imaginable! We would try and organize the visit to coincide with the patronal feast. as far many more people would be present from round about. We would stay the night in a school or in a room adjacent to the chapel or in someone’s house, accompanied by the inevitable fleas, rats, chickens, a mother turkey incubating her eggs under the bed or even a nanny goat licking my face!! [I always] looked forward to getting back to the parish main town to have a decent wash, food, wash clothes, deflea myself and rest.

The smallest parish in the Diocese is one of about forty odd villages scattered around the mountain sides; the larger parishes are anything up to 130 or so villages. Many villages have a Eucharist just once a year – or in some cases once every two years – however, things are improving with internet, mobile phones, more road, better infrastructure and more places becoming accessible by truck.

So there we were, with kind, generous and lovely people doing their best for us, feeding us and attending the meetings and the Eucharist and the other necessary sacraments with enthusiasm.

The faith is humble, simple, humbling, utterly trusting and noisy. There is a profound faith in Divine Providence which seems to permeate the whole of their lives illustrated by phrases such as “If God wills”, “Go with God” “Good day (morning) of God”, “May God bless you”, “May God pay you”. The latter usually said after having done someone a favour. There is a God-given grace by which the people are able to put up with all kinds of difficulties and tragedies in a sort of stoic silence and resignation knowing that there is very little they can do about it except put their faith in God and Our Lady and just get on with it.

Some of the feasts they keep, which are often feasts of the suffering Jesus, are celebrated by hundreds of others outside the parish boundaries who flood into the town where the statue is to take part with the locals in all the festive celebrations. These celebrations are mostly celebrated by those who have no interest what so ever in the life of the Church or desire to participate in parish or zonal activities, but would insist that they are people of faith proved by their participating in the feast, the procession, the Mass and the rest, and so therefore are “very Catholic”.

In general their sense of sin is very strong. If they suffer any misfortune, which is often and many, then [they believe] it is God punishing them and they are receiving only what they deserve. But they accept all that because God for them is always good and knows what He’s doing.

So there were many things I had to learn and accept as I lived with and tried to serve these people as a priest. I had not come to give but to receive; I had not come to teach but to learn; I had not come to impose or to talk, or to change ideas or attitudes, but to listen. It was all very, very difficult as I had to curb my arrogance and totally eliminate any attitudes of superiority or of knowing better. It is a totally different world, a different mentality, a different culture, a different people, a different language. A completely different way of doing things, with different attitudes and indeed, a different religion.

Of the thirty-eight years I was in Peru about twenty-four of those was spent in formation which was, for me, a totally different experience. About fifty years ago, the then bishop, John McNabb, decided to start a formation centre, one for young men and another for young women, to give young people the opportunity to receive some kind of human, spiritual and academic formation for a year, so that when they left the centre they could then participate in the religious life of their village or town and thus contribute something to the spiritual life of the Diocese in general.

In 1986, I was asked to work in the centre for young men where I was until 1992 and again from 1996 until 2002. From 1992 until 1995 I was on the staff of the diocesan seminary, about eight hours by bus from Chulucanas, to which at that time our seminarians were sent [At this seminary, Fr Hugh’s “boss” was Fr Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV]. And then from 2010 until 2016 I was teaching in our own diocesan seminary which started to function in 2010.

The average age of the seminarians is about 18 or so. The vast majority come from humble campesino families from the mountains. Their education is minimal with some of them barely able to read or write. So anyone who expressed an interest in being a priest would first of all go to the formation centre before going on to the major seminary.

One of the biggest difficulties for me was to accept the fact that I could not presume anything and I mean anything: everything had to be explained. For example it was no use saying “right, today we will be talking about the Incarnation” presuming the seminarians knew to what the word “Incarnation” referred, or Vatican ll. It was a long slow process explaining the very basics of the Faith or church history, apart from any other subject being taught.

In the Diocese of Chulucanas, the average time of formation is ten years: the first is a propaedeutic year, then three of philosophy, a pastoral year and then four of theology and then usually at least a year as a deacon before ordination to the priesthood.

When I left Chulucanas there were about 12 seminarians altogether, with numbers reducing and fewer applying. In the first few years we had had to turn applicants away for lack of room!! Now, most seminarians are from the mountains and only about two or three from the coast. It seems that the attractions of the modern world are catching up with the young with more alternatives for further education available. One of the most important things that had to be evaluated was the motivation of the seminarian for entering in the first place as we felt many saw the priesthood as a means of improving their financial and social status.

For the last three years before returning to England I was chaplain to the local hospital and that was grim, not for me so much but for the poor patients. The hospital is a small one with about 60 beds, poorly equipped with, for example only two screens, no privacy and hardly any nursing care and no food. The basic nursing care such as washing, turning and changing the patient is done by the family as well as bringing in the food.

My ministry was to visit everyone, anoint the sick. I think I anointed more people in those three years than in the whole of my priestly ministry, and give Holy Communion. It could be difficult as some of the patients or their family hadn’t a clue what anointing of the sick was and many, for various reasons, couldn’t or wouldn’t receive Communion. The other thing I found difficult was the religious indifference of the staff. The country as a whole is still predominantly Catholic but knowledge and practice of the Faith is almost non-existent and this was reflected in the staff most of whom saw me as an anomaly just to be tolerated.

On the whole though my thirty-eight years in the Peruvian diocese of Chulucanas were for me a great blessing and privilege and to those who made it possible for me to go and to stay there for so long, and to those with whom I worked and knew while out there, I will be always grateful.

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With thanks to Fr Hugh Dutton for sharing this account.