Father inspired to become a priest at 15 Christopher HartleyThe scion of a wealthy English and Spanish noblewoman, she follows the example of St. Teresa of Calcutta who led her to a difficult life as a missionary in what is now southern Mexico.

In an extensive interview with the Register, Father Hartley said his 42 years as a priest have allowed him to reflect on the challenges facing missions and the Church more broadly. “But this is real missionary work and I love it. “It is the laying of the foundations of a spiritual structure that we will never see,” he said. Circular of St. John Paul Redemptoris Missio He said it was the center of his spirituality. “Missionary work is very different from pastoral work. Pastoral work is the next stage. “This comes after the first proclamation of the Person of Jesus Christ,” he continued.

Father Hartley, who gave up a prestigious and comfortable life in Spain and England, expressed his gratitude for his virginity, recalling that a plantation manager in the Dominican Republic held a gun to his head while on duty. It enabled him to work fearlessly in his duties. “I had no reason to ask God for a little more time. I can say, ‘God, whenever you think it’s time for me.’ If you want me to work more, please take care of me. If it’s over, it’s over.’” Unlike a parent or spouse, she said, “My heart is not divided. I live in a supernatural order. God’s grace is what connects me to the Mixteco people. If I had never loved Jesus Christ, I would never have met them.”

Father Hartley, 65, ordained by John Paul II in 1982, had volunteered to study with St. Teresa of Calcutta, but at her request he was assigned to a parish in New York City, where he became friends with Cardinal John O’Calcutta. Connor. Eschewing religious advancement, he asked to become a missionary in 2009. Father Hartley became famous in the Dominican Republic For her advocacy for the human rights of Haitian sugarcane workers who crossed into the neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, to work in the fields where they lived in substandard conditions, without electricity or drinking water, and were paid by script rather than wages.

Father Hartley’s works became the subject Sugar Price: a 2007 video documentary narrated by film actor Paul Newman about his advocacy that resulted in the Church purchasing a small plot of land where Haitians could live on sugar plantations without being harassed by armed guards. Powerful landowners resisted his work and succeeded in deporting him. After nearly nine years in the Dominican Republic, he was assigned to missions in Africa (2007-2018) and became one of more than 40 missionary priests in the Spanish diocese.

Charlotte “Charlie” Ponticelli, a former State Department and Labor Department official who collaborated with Father Hartley, told the Register that meeting him strengthened her faith, which she shares with her family and prison ministry. “Father Hartley is and always will be a real-life hero and a living saint to me. “It is always amazing to me to see how our Lord somehow manages to bring us together so that we can be instruments of peace and justice in this world.”

Father Hartley said he faced hostility and death threats from Muslims in Sudan and Ethiopia. “I couldn’t celebrate Mass publicly, but I did celebrate it privately,” he said, for fear of retaliation. However, he managed to secretly convert many Muslims and establish a community of local and foreign Catholics. While there, he cared for hospital patients. He was hospitalized in Ethiopia after a near-fatal motorcycle accident.

Father Hartley has been working for about a year. Arroyo PrietoA village in the Cochoapa region of Guerrero in southern Mexico, known for its rugged terrain and isolated hamlets and villages separated by mountains. Besides Spanish, four major non-mutually intelligible languages ​​spoken in the state, including MixtecoAbout 29% of those who speak them do not speak Spanish. Language differences and dire poverty also present challenges as Father Hartley navigates difficult roads and trails in a 4WD vehicle or on horseback. Receives support from parties nonprofit MissionMercy.org.

Father Hartley serves more than 19 communities. “They have been abandoned by the church and the government,” Father Hartley said, “and for some it is the first proclamation of the Person of Jesus Christ, the Gospel and the sacraments. They are the followers of their own pagan and pre-Hispanic traditions, the first missionaries (Franciscans and Augustinians).” They are very religious people, with a mixture of what they taught them, and with the revolutions and independence from Spain, they were left to their fate and completely abandoned by everyone.” “There is no rule of law here,” he added.

Tlapa Bishop Dagoberto Sosa Arriaga sent Father Hartley in early 2023. Father Hartley told him: “If there’s a place no one wants to go, or you don’t know what to do with that part of the diocese, I’m yours, man.” During Comboni missionary priests They were already in the Cochoapa area and had over 150 communities to take care of. Some have beautiful churches built by local people rather than roads or clinics. In some communities, Father Hartley was the first priest to celebrate Mass in more than three years.

Roads to medical care, schools, and law enforcement are also scarce. Power is out. For example, Father Hartley said that just before the meeting, the electricity in the village was cut off, but he was able to celebrate Mass with a flashlight. “It’s a very difficult life. “Even the most basic needs are unstable,” he said.

“But their religion is a reflection of their difficulties. Mass intentions are linked to rural life so that lightning does not strike their crops or disease affects their corn and beans. These people are not living: They are surviving. And they die for the most unnecessary reasons. There is no doctor. “The only medicine here is the medicine I brought from Madrid,” he said.

Father Hartley said their difficulties have also led some Guerrero people to place great faith in witchcraft. “Some people sacrifice in front of the church at 5am, so you don’t really know what they worship. But I am sure that Jesus Christ is not the core and center of their religion. It’s a mixture. For example, the god of rain is St. Mark. Missionaries tried to replace their worship of the gods of wind, sky, and rain with saints. But ultimately, you don’t know who Jesus Christ is to them.”

“For example, they pray to the dead: They offer sacrifices to the dead; It is the dead who will care for us. There they offer sacrifices to the dead because they ask them to intercede for them,” Father Hartley said.

Many people there are religious but uninformed about the Catholic faith, Father Hartley said. “The essence of our life as Catholics is the resurrection of Christ on Sunday. But for them the big day is the Day of the Dead or the saints’ days. What matters to them is not the Risen Christ. they worship el santo entierro (“holy burial”), this is Christ reclining. All over Mexico. The focus is on a dead Jesus Christ.”

“Their religion has nothing to do with love; That Jesus loved me and died because he loved me, no. God is the one they must please and for whom they must buy things. ‘How much does the ritual cost?’ they ask. This is a contractual relationship. According to them, a priest has special powers to mediate with God. That’s why I’m like a witch doctor for them,” he said.

Father Hartley emphasized: “Evangelization is repetition, repetition, repetition.”

The Church in Mexico is facing challenges, Father Hartley said. For decades since the 1910 revolution, the Church has faced open hostility from the government. “There are very few missionaries and inadequately trained priests,” he said, adding: “You don’t know what religion they belong to. The Vatican has closed down seminaries that were training mainly revolutionaries, not missionaries, evangelists, or men of God.”

Overall, missionary life taught this priest a lot about life and faith. “The lives of these people are admirable, and I am in awe of the sacrifices they make as they struggle to survive on a daily basis. Watching them live was a big lesson in Christianity for me.”