JAMES CARNEY, PRIEST

Father James Carney grew up as a fairly typical member of a large Catholic family in the American Midwest. He served in the Army Corps of Engineers during the invasion of France in World War II. After the war, he studied engineering but his war experience made him seek something more. He decided to become a Jesuit. He studied hard and longed to become a missionary priest, and to serve those in greatest need. Ordained in 1961, he was assigned to the Jesuit mission in Honduras, where he became known as Padre Guadalupe.

SOCIAL INJUSTICE

The most striking reality in Honduras was the extreme poverty of the rural peasants… Reform was surely needed to lift the masses from their misery and Fr Carney lent his support to many social projects. Gradually he concluded that the people’s poverty was the fruit of injustice and nothing less than the empowerment of the poor and radical social transformation would bring relief. The people needed to hear of Jesus of Nazareth, the liberator of the oppressed.

AT THE HEIGHT OF THE COLD WAR

Over the next decade he became increasingly committed to the people’s struggle for land-reform and justice. The majority of the rural population were poor, illiterate, living in shacks and resigned to watching their children die of malnutrition and disease… When the Catholic bishops began to preach social justice, the rich [in Honduras] spoke of betrayal and communist subversion. ‘If I love the Honduran poor,’ said Fr Carney, ‘I have to share their life as much as possible’; but what got him into trouble was his struggle to eliminate their poverty.

HIS STRUGGLE TO ELIMINATE THEIR POVERTY

He renounced his US passport and became a Honduran citizen. In 1980 the Honduran government arrested him, stripped him of his citizenship and expelled him from the country. He worked for three years in neighbouring Nicaragua but his heart was in Honduras.

HIS REMAINS WERE NEVER RECOVERED

In July 1983 he slipped across the border as chaplain to a small band of Honduran guerrillas. Their dreams of a popular uprising were unrealistic and within weeks they had all been tracked down and eliminated.

Years later, army deserters revealed that Fr James Carney had been interrogated, tortured, and on September 16 had been thrown from a helicopter to his death. His remains were never recovered.

From “All Saints” by Robert Ellsberg, The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1997; extract published in “Far East” - Magazine of the Columban Missionaries - Sept./Oct. 2013

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