End of year letter from Peru

Fr Ed in front of Sacred Heart Church as roof was added on 17th December

Columban priest Fr Ed O'Connell reports from Lima.

The political scene has taken a massive turn for the worst. President, Pedro Castillo, fearing that the Congress was going to "vacate" him, chose to close down the Congress and take control of the country, but the Congress was quicker than him and the majority there voted for his dismissal. The Armed Forces backed the Congress and so now we have a new President, the first women, Dina Boluarte, the Vice-President of Castillo. Then Castillo was on the way to the Mexican Embassy, where he was assured asylum, but the president's bodyguards instead received orders to hand him over to the Judiciary. He has now been given an 18 month detention order by a judge. His family has since been granted asylum.

The new President is a lawyer and doing her best to get a political consensus and has put in place a team of ministers who are not well known. For the past two weeks there have been mass protests in the interior of Peru, especially the Central Highlands and the "Sur Andino" (Southern Andes) including Cusco and Arequipa. Many main roads have been blocked. A State of Emergency was declared. 30 deaths so far, with Human Rights lawyers claiming an excess of force by Police and Armed Forces, and there are many injured and many arrests. The new President presented a bill to bring forward the General Election to late 2023, but the unholy alliance of extreme left and right joining forces rejected the legislation, wanting a new election now! The Congress is even more unpopular than Castillo was and the new President has ended up inheriting a poisoned chalice!

This week the Congress has finally passed legislation to hold the General Election in April 2024. This will allow for some electoral reforms to be passed first but many in the country want to see this Congress gone well before that date!

Back to everyday reality: The number of cases of Covid in Peru up yesterday to: 4,434,630 and the number of deaths: 217,998. Cases are now around 10,000 a day and deaths up to around 30 a day. The fifth wave of Covid has begun and most of the people hospitalised and dying are those who have not been vaccinated. The fourth jab is now available but quite a few people stopped after the second vaccination. We await news of a fifth vaccination but it does not seem to be coming!

I accompany Manuel Duato Special Needs School, a Columban project, with over 450 severely mentally-challenged children. In May I handed over the Chair of the Board of Governors to Alicio Dominguez. He was the Head teacher but now retired, and Carmen Escudero took over as Head Teacher. I remain on the Board. The school is fully open, but attendance is not 100% as up to 25% of the children are off ill, mostly for short periods of time. This is an unusually high percentage but a possible result of the pandemic after-effects. We have sent out to the most needy 25 families a bonus of US$80 to help them pay basic utility bills and buy some food.

The Warmi Huasi project accompanies children and adolescents at risk in the Lima districts of Carabayllo and San Martin de Porres and in the Province of Paucar de Sara Sara, high up in the Andes in the department of Ayacucho.

The five communal kitchens in San Benito, four of them run by the mothers of the homework clubs and the other by a local community leader, continue to function and are still very much needed. They serve now in the month of December '22, 636 meals a day, mostly for children, adolescents and senior citizens, and also 75 social cases. Numbers fluctuate as some parents find work and drop out whilst others out of necessity join.

Latest news from Ayacucho: We are now accompanying three primary schools, as they restart the reading clubs in their schools, supervised by teachers who have been trained by us. We have three more who started a new program called "reading box", where the school receives a box of 70 books and a reading plan for the teachers, to see how the children get on during 2022 with their reading. The prize is being named a reading club in 2023, if the reading comprehension of the students has improved. The two Children and Adolescent committees in Pausa and Lampa meet and have their action plans for 2022. We are also working with two secondary schools to improve the adolescents' social skills, as alcoholism and teenage pregnancies are everyday realities.

Latest news from Lima: The four homework clubs are open and the reading club also, the latter twice a week in the Warmi Huasi Centre in San Benito. The Reading Club has just celebrated their 8th anniversary, with over 80 children participating. There was a puppet show, songs, dances and poetry, all with the theme of care for the Earth. The Therapy Club meets twice a week, helping over 50 children who have minor disabilities with physio and speech therapies.

A big concern: In both Carabayllo and Ayacucho the children and adolescents have regressed in their development. After two years away from school, mental health is a serious concern. Time has to be spent on socio-emotional skills in the homework clubs and reading clubs, so as to encourage them to overcome their fears and give them confidence before being able to start their homework or reading exercises.

I am part of the Columban team in the parish of Holy Archangels, a massive parish, with over 130,000 people. There are 18 chapels and at weekends I accompany two of them. I visit these chapel communities during the week for Bible reflection in a format encouraging personal meditation.

I thought I had finished my time building chapels and meeting rooms only to find I have one more to supervise, that of the Sacred Heart community. We began on 3 November with the office, classroom, kitchen, toilets and staircase. The foundations are in and the walls are up, columns filled in with concrete and the floor too! Roofing took place on Saturday 17 December. Hopefully will start the chapel section on 26 December. I am aiming to celebrate my 50th ordination anniversary Mass there on 29 April 2023, in the completed chapel, all be it just with the walls, concrete floor and roof completed!

Fr Ed O'Connell is a Columban Father, born in Somerset and educated by the Salesians in Battersea. He has been working as a missionary priest in Lima, Peru, for nearly four decades.

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