Spanish priest calls for ‘more missionaries’ in ‘perilous’ southern Mexico

Spanish missionary Father Christopher Hartley remains neither complacent nor afraid as he brings the Gospel to the materially and spiritually poor of southern Mexico.

Born into privilege as the son of a wealthy Englishman and a Spanish noblewoman, Hartley has spent most of the 43 years since his ordination by Pope John Paul II as a missionary. His itinerant mission has led him to some of the world’s most dangerous and neglected places — regions where the faith had scarcely been proclaimed and where the poor have long suffered injustice. He received death threats for advocating for exploited plantation workers in the Dominican Republic and ministered in hostile Muslim regions of Africa.

Today, Hartley, 66, evangelizes in the mountainous state of Guerrero in southern Mexico, where many of the Indigenous Mixtec people speak little or no Spanish. Reflecting on his vocation, he told EWTN News: “The only thing I have ever wanted was this life.”

Even after medical evacuation from Sudan and surgery in Spain several years ago, he didn’t rest. He asked to be sent to “the poorest and most terrible” place in Mexico. In 2023, he went to Arroyo Prieto, a remote region of the Sierra Madre mountains, where he ministers to 160 villages where priests seldom visit. Hartley served there alone until 2025, when Archbishop Jesús Sanz Montes of Spain sent additional missionaries.

“It’s a terribly dangerous area. Kidnappings, assaults, and murders are commonplace… There are no police or law enforcement, and the only law is that of the strongest or the most violent. It’s not a place I would recommend to anyone with a family, not even to help, unless they are aware of the risk of death,” he said.

Despite these dangers, the priest said progress was made in 2025. “We now have three tabernacles with the Blessed Sacrament in Arroyo Prieto, one in El Coyul, where the Marian Missionaries from Queretaro are evangelizing, and two in San Pedro el Viejo.”

Of the $154,000 needed to complete a project in Joya Real — one of the smaller villages — approximately $74,000 has already been raised. It will provide a residence for missionaries and a school for catechism.

Hartley expects two priests from Spain to arrive this year but is appealing for additional priests and lay missionaries. Asked what he needs most, his answer was immediate: “More missionaries!”

Catechesis remains one of the mission’s greatest challenges.

“There is enormous work to be done with the children and youth,” Hartley said, describing Mixtecs who are “lost, disoriented… who do not know Jesus Christ.” He added: “We urgently need more evangelizers… who want to come and lose their lives for the kingdom.”

There are few paved roads and scant access to potable water and electricity in the area. The material poverty is overwhelming. Language poses a further obstacle, since many Mixtec residents speak little Spanish. “Somehow, we can make ourselves understood,” he said.

Like many Indigenous peoples in Central and South America, the Mixtecs practice a syncretism blending Catholic elements with pagan beliefs. Hartley explained that for them, “the god of rain is the same as the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” and “Jesus Christ is not king of kings, but just another saint.”

What troubles the missionary the most, however, is a deeper theological misunderstanding. For many, “God is not love… they don’t know it.” God is feared rather than loved, and Masses are sometimes requested to harm enemies. “This isn’t malice but a lack of evangelization,” he said.

Mixtec rituals involve animal sacrifices to appease deities disguised as saints. Hartley has prohibited such sacrifices, as well as alcohol, on church grounds, noting that drunkenness often accompanies rituals.

“The question is not ‘Why they are like this?’ but where was the Church all these years?” he asked. He pointed out the stark contrast between wealthy countries and parishes, well supplied with clergy, and regions where “millions of people are waiting for someone to come.” Many priests, he observed, hesitate to serve in remote parts of Mexico because of the real dangers involved.

Dangerous drug cartels are a constant threat.

“Any missionaries must accept the possibility of death,” Hartley said, while cautioning against reducing the Church’s mission to humanitarian aid alone, describing some philanthropic efforts as those of “well-meaning pagans” who may even be hostile to the Catholic faith. He wants to send missionaries in pairs to live among the poor themselves. All missionaries and lay volunteers undergo careful vetting and must be willing to embrace the poverty of the Mixtec people.

“This is about living more ‘precariously,’” he explained, and about bearing greater fruit with fewer resources….This is about living more simply, finding a room, using flashlights, canned goods, one plate, and little else. By living with them, you get to know them better, and you don’t waste a minute traveling back and forth. This way, the evangelizing work is more fruitful, and there are fewer expenses,” he explained.

Hartley spoke affectionately about the Mixtecs: “They give even what they don’t have. It’s very touching: The people themselves feed the missionaries, giving them food, tortillas, beans, and their corn. It’s the poor who give.”

Locals who return from working in the United States bring back their newly acquired Protestant faith, which is growing. He pointed to the failure of Catholic authorities in Mexico, saying that the Church has been absent in perilous parts of the country.

“Priests are preoccupied with humanitarian issues as if the Church were a philanthropy,” he said, while Protestants proclaim “Jesus Christ, the Bible, God’s love, and salvation.” He added that the Catholic Church has too often focused on “social issues rather than announcing Jesus Christ.”

In his latest letter featured by the Mission of Mercy Foundation, Hartley described his mission territory as the “Mixtec Galilee,” where “the good people, unwittingly, put on the best Nativity play, which is not a performance but life itself.”

In the hills beyond Acapulco, families live in simple mud-brick homes with dirt floors, where animals and children roam freely. “What other Nativity scene of artificial moss, twinkling lights, and garish colored paper do I need to contemplate before my eyes what the Gospel tells us?” he asked.

As Catholics reenter Ordinary Time after contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation and the gifts of the Magi, Hartley sees a renewed summons to evangelization.

“The missionary’s love is not serene, like the contemplative’s quiet contemplation; his missionary love is restless, imaginative, stubborn, and wandering, and from this restlessness and anxieties are born the projects that transform and humanize ruined lives, ignite hope, offer new paths to the Gospel, and soften hearts.”