Catholics Expect Powerful Experience From Anniversary Pilgrimage

By Eileen Dugan
The Sooner Catholic

OKLAHOMA CITY — July 28, 2006 marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Father Stanley  Rother. This humble Oklahoma priest was shot down in his rectory for remaining faithful to God and the Tzutuhil Indians, his charges at the Catholic Mission of Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala.

To commemorate Father Rother’s sacrifice, Archbishop Eusebius Beltran will lead a pilgrimage to Santiago Atitlan from July 22-29.

Dennis Frazier, deacon at Saint Patrick’s parish in Oklahoma City, said he was going on the pilgrimage because he is familiar with the story of Father Rother and knows  Father Thomas McSherry. Father McSherry is the priest who took over at the mission after Father Rother’s death and served there for 17 years. He is now pastor at Saint Patrick Church.

Frazier has made numerous trips to Peru with the Medical Eye Mission. This year, when he had a conflict and could not go to Peru, he decided to go on the pilgrimage to Guatemala instead. He will be visiting Guatemala for the first time.

 “It will be a change of pace, a more spiritual trip than the ones I’ve made to Peru,” he said. “There is something about martyrs; they are very important to our Catholic faith. This trip to Guatemala will be a quiet time and a meditative time. This tribute to Father Rother is well deserved.”

Father Anthony Taylor, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Oklahoma City, had met Father Rother when the mission priest was in the states to attend the ordination of his nephew, Father Don Wolf, in May 1981. Two months later, Father Taylor was shocked to learn that the unpretentious priest from Oklahoma had been murdered in Guatemala. Since that time, Father Taylor has been to the mission three times.

He went to Guatemala because he speaks Spanish and wanted to support Father McSherry. He also went because Father Rother had died there, and he wanted to show support for the people of the mission. “I helped Father McSherry by saying Masses at Santiago Atitlan and Cerro de Oro, which is part of the same parish but at another location. I received more than I gave. It was a very spiritual journey,” he said. “The people were living by faith, walking by faith. They were facing the darkness of persecution and fear. Father McSherry was very heroic in staying there and pastoring them.

“This will be a very powerful pilgrimage,” Father Taylor said. “Father Rother was an inspiring person. We will be distributing prayer cards about Father Rother in the Tzutuhil language, the language of the local people, and in Spanish.

“In that area of Guatemala, there is a short life expectancy. Most of the people who were alive when Father Rother was there have died. Our pilgrimage is a way to put Father Rother’s witness before the people he died for,” Father Taylor said.

Another member of this year’s pilgrimage is Joan O’Neill, the former secretary of Father David Monahan, a past editor of the Sooner Catholic. O’Neill worked with Father Monahan at the Sooner Catholic for 27 years.

Through her work at the archdiocesan newspaper, O’Neill learned of the mission and met all the key players from Guatemala. These included Father Raymond Carlin, who started Oklahoma’s involvement in the mission, and Father Bob Westerman, one of the early priests assigned down there. She also met Jude Panzini and his wife, who worked at the mission, and Frankie Williams, a good friend of Father Rother’s who was from Wichita and volunteered every summer at the mission in Guatemala.

 When Father Monahan left the Sooner Catholic and started writing Father Rother’s biography, O’Neill continued to work with him on the book.

 “I first went to Guatemala in 1996 at the same time as Father Rother’s 15th anniversary, but I went with Father Monahan, not as part of the pilgrimage,” O’Neill said.  “Father Monahan was doing research for Father Stanley Rother’s biography. He did some interviews of people at the mission he hadn’t been able to reach in the states.”

During that visit, O’Neill and Father Monahan had stayed at the rectory with Father McSherry. “The rectory is positioned at the edge of the central plaza where there is a wonderful balcony where you can see the entire life of the village unfolding. It was the Feast of Saint James, and a carnival was set up: a Ferris wheel and fireworks. It was wonderful!” she said.

When O’Neill returned to Guatemala five years later, in 2001, she did go as part of the pilgrimage Archbishop Beltran was sponsoring. This time she went “to pay tribute to Father Rother and all the other wonderful people who had served there, beginning with Father Carlin and ending with Father McSherry.”

The one thing that struck O’Neill most about the Tzutuhil people, during both visits, was their warmth. “Watching the children play, I noticed that they put their hands and arms around each other and often held hands. I was touched by how much warmth they expressed to each other. They are much more comfortable with physical expressions of affection than we are. The Tzutuhil people are really beautiful people. I understand Father Stanley Rother’s falling in love with them,” O’Neill said.

The Tzutuhil fell in love with Father Rother, as well. O’Neill thinks that what most endeared Father Rother to them was his mastery of their difficult language. “It is my understanding that none of the people who presided at the mission could speak Tzutuhil until Father Stanley Rother. He was the first to master their language,” she said.

But it was Father Carlin, O’Neill said, who realized the importance of the Tzutuhil people having their own written language. “The translation of the New Testament into the Tzutuhil was started under Father Carlin, completed under Father Stanley Rother, but not published until Father McSherry’s time,” she said.

Father Stephen Bird, pastor of Epiphany Church in Oklahoma City and head of the Office of the Office of Worship and Spiritual Life for the Archdiocese, will also make the pilgrimage to Guatemala. Previously, he has been to the mission in Guatemala for the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma staffing of the mission and for the 10th and 20th anniversaries of Father Rother’s death.

“I only met Father Rother once or twice because, when I was ordained a priest, he was already down in Guatemala,” Father Bird said. “When he died, I had been ordained for five years. I know because I was in Minnesota for my fifth-year reunion when I got the news of his death. When I came home, I helped plan the service for his funeral,” he said.

Father Bird was assigned to Holy Trinity Church in Okarche shortly after returning from Guatemala for Father Rother’s 20th anniversary. Holy Trinity was Father Rother’s home parish. “While I was in Okarche, I got very involved with a lot of issues relating to Father Rother like commissioning his statue and having it built. I also got to know Father Rother’s extended family. He has many relatives in Okarche,” Father Bird said.

Father Bruce Natsuhara, pastor of Saint Joseph Old Cathedral parish, is sending Sister Susan Clark, CST, to Guatemala to represent Saint Joseph’s.

 Sister Susan, Pastoral Associate and Director of Education at Saint Joseph’s, will be making her first trip to Guatemala. She had never met Father Rother, but she got to know his family during the two years she served in pastoral ministry at Holy Trinity in Okarche from 1986-88.

Sister’s religious order, the Carmelite Sisters of Saint Therese, used to minister at another mission in Guatemala. From them, Sister Susan learned about difficult conditions existing in that country. “I want to enter fully into the pilgrimage. I’ll pray for all the people and the government and that there will be peace,” she said.

Carol Davito is Archbishop Beltran’s secretary and has been to Guatemala “at least a half-dozen times.” Three of these visits were anniversaries of Father Rother’s death: his 10th, 15th, and 20th anniversaries.

“I knew Father Rother. I first met him in 1975. I worked for Bishop Bernard Ganter before working for Archbishop Beltran,” Davito said. Whenever Father Rother returned to the states, “he would report to Bishop Ganter in Tulsa. I was Bishop Ganter’s secretary. Father Rother continued to visit Tulsa when Bishop Beltran was in charge. [Archbishop Beltran became Bishop of Tulsa is 1978 when Bishop Ganter was assigned to a diocese in Texas.]

Davito said the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City no longer takes part in the priestly duties of the mission. She said we agreed to “help them out with priestly personnel until they could provide their own priests. Now the pastor at Santiago Atitlan is a native of the local diocese although he is not from that village. We still provide the mission spiritual and financial support,” she said.

“We are going to Guatemala this year to honor the memory of Father Stanley Rother. The pilgrimage will also offer us the opportunity to visit with the people there whom I love very much. Once you’ve been there, you fall in love with them.

“Father Rother was a quiet, humble man. I admire him very much. He wasn’t flashy at all. He would have blended into the woodwork. He had difficulty learning Latin when he was in the seminary, but he finished Father Raymond’s work, the translation of the Bible from Spanish into Tzutuhil. It just shows how much the Holy Spirit plays a part in our lives,” Davito said.