By Susan Gallagher

A Diocese of Helena delegation that returned from Guatemala on Feb. 3 saw the fruits of diocesan mission work in the Central American country, and got a close-up look at ongoing needs and challenges. Bishop George Leo Thomas led the group, which went to the mission’s hub of Santo Tomas la Union plus outlying villages and was accompanied by a Helena newsman.

On page 4 of this edition of The Montana Catholic, Bishop Thomas tells readers the group came back inspired “by the faith and goodness of the Guatemalan people.” Most of the seven diocesan visitors, who left Montana on Jan. 25, were in Guatemala for the first time. The visit was the third for the bishop and for Mark Frei, the Helena-based manager of the mission, which operates a school and a clinic. The diocese founded the mission in 1964.

Principal Rick Hyland of St. Joseph Elementary School in Missoula, one of two school administrators who traveled, said that the “most profound part of the trip was the liturgies. The youth all the way to the elderly make the liturgy come alive. There is full participation. They have a culture of faith.”

Clinica Maxena is seeing a rise in people with diabetes and in the need for infant formula as mothers suffering poor nutrition cannot breastfeed adequately, Frei said. On a positive note, the clinic now can provide electrocardiograms, using equipment bought recently with money from the Foundation for the Diocese of Helena.

School visits included one to an outlying school that a Guatemalan man, who received his own education through the mission, helped found.

Frei said tangible improvements in the lives of people the mission helps include installation of Onil wood-burning stoves that make cooking over open fires in homes unnecessary. The indoor burning causes serious respiratory problems. The mission buys the $100 stoves, sells them to people who can pay and gives them to those unable, said Frei, who watched as a stove was installed in a woman’s home.

Msgr. Kevin O’Neill, V.G., who visited the mission for the first time, said that the Cathedral parish’s Lenten project will focus on fundraising for the installation of the Onil stoves. The fundraising will play off of the homonym between the names of the pastor and the stove.

In addition to Bishop Thomas, Frei, Hyland and Msgr. O’Neill, members of the diocesan group are Father Tom Haffey of St. Ann Parish in Butte, Montana Catholic Conference executive Moe Wosepka and Principal Jeremy Beck of Loyola Sacred Heart High School in Missoula. Reporter Martin Kidston of the Independent Record in Helena accompanied them.

Father Haffey said he is in an ongoing conversation about coordinating a diocese-wide student sponsorship effort for La Asuncion School.

Needs at the mission include money for the education of children, for clinic programs and for the Angel Fund, which helps Guatemalan villagers receive urban medical care when clinic resources are insufficient. Contributions, made payable to the diocese, may be sent to Catholic Diocese of Helena, Attention Guatemala Missions, P.O. Box 1729, Helena MT 59624-1729. Contributions also may be given online at www.diocesehelena.org.

Frei added the mission staff is assisted by volunteer Alex Woelkers, a recent Carroll College graduate whose year of work at the mission will end soon. Frei said people interested in applying for the volunteer position may call him at 406-442-5820 or send an e-mail to mfrei@diocesehelena.org.

For more photographs from this and other Guatemala Mission trips, visit www.diocesehelena.org.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 2, February 19, 2010.