Oklahoma City, Okla., Sep 25, 2017 / 10:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Father John Goggin was serving as a missionary priest in Guatemala on July 28, 1981, when he was woken up early with the news that Father Stanley Rother, from the parish just up the road, had been killed in the night by a government-backed death squad.
While another priest went to be with Fr. Rother’s people, it became Fr. Goggin’s job to drive an hour to the Sololá-Chimaltenango diocesan office to alert the people there. He also had to tell the news to the American embassy and the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.
Fr. Goggin said he knew Father Stanley for many years, having been missionary priests in the same region of Guatemala.
Fr. Stanley was a priest from the small town of Okarche, Oklahoma, and spent 13 years of his priesthood as a beloved missionary in Santiago, Atitlan in Guatemala before he was killed. Pope Francis declared him a martyr last year, paving the way for his beatification.
His sacrifice is something that continues to inspire and challenge Fr. Goggin as a priest, which is why he made the nearly 2,000-mile journey to Oklahoma City to be present for his beatification on September 23.
“I certainly wanted to be here, I never thought I would know a person who would be (on the path to canonization),” he said. “Being able to come to Fr. Stan’s beatification is just wonderful to me.”
“In all the prayers as a priest–it’s the whole idea of trying to give yourself, doing what the Lord asks, what the people ask, and you find that in Fr. Stan,” he added.
Fr. Stanley was also known for not wanting to abandon his people, even though he knew his life was at risk. After Fr. Stanley died, Fr. Goggin said he still did not want the people to feel abandoned.
That’s why he was grateful when the opportunity came to work with Unbound, a non-profit founded by lay Catholics who had also spend time serving as missionaries in Latin America.
The group works as a sponsorship program, pairing children and elderly people with sponsors in other countries, who provide monthly financial aid and moral support in order to help them achieve their own dreams and goals. Sponsors communicate with their partners through letters and e-mail, and also have the opportunity to visit the communities through awareness trips sponsored by Unbound.
Unbound currently serves in 19 countries, including countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
“When the opportunity came to become part of Unbound…I felt it was the direct result of a gift from Fr. Stanley Rother,” Fr. Goggin said, “because we were trying to fill a little bit of his shoes.”
One of the founders of Unbound had known Fr. Stanley while serving as a missionary in Guatemala, and was inspired by his spirit of solidarity with his people, which he kept in the ethic of Unbound.
Fr. Stanley had once flunked Latin studies, but he had mastered the local indigenous dialect of Tzutuhil and had become a beloved member of his community in Santiago Atitlan. He would share meals with them, visit them in their homes, and lived a simple life just like his people.
“We come from the same roots,” said Andrew Kling, director of community outreach and media relations for Unbound.
“Walking with, rather than speaking for the community, is part of our ethic. Rather than passing out stuff, we walk with the families. We have social workers who ask them: what are your dreams, what are your goals, how can we help you get there with a little bit of help every month. We don’t just parachute in western aid workers, we’re developing an ear and listening to the community,” he said.
Chico Chavajay is a Guatemalan who works as the coordinator of Unbound’s largest project, based in the region around Lake Atitlan where Fr. Stanley worked.
Chavajay grew up speaking the same native language that Fr. Stanley learned to speak. While he was only one year old when Fr. Stanley died, Chavajay told CNA that the impact of Fr. Stanley is still strongly felt by everyone in the region.
“Everyone knows him, if you just mention his name, people respond, because he rescued people and people knew they were rescued by him,” Chavajay said.
And it doesn’t matter if someone is Catholic or not. “Padre A’plas is Padre A’plas,” Chavajay noted, using Fr. Rother’s other name.
“Stanley” was such a foreign name that the people of Guatemala took to calling the priest Fr. Francisco, after his baptismal name of Francis, which in Tzutuhil translates to A’plas.
“There’s lots of connections of spirituality of Fr. Stanley and the spirit of Unbound,” Chavajay added. “Our program prioritizes education and health, just like Fr. Stanley.”
Fr. Stanley had helped to establish the first hospital in the area, which was free and open to anyone, Chavajay said. That hospital saved his sister’s life when he was just 8 years old.
Chavajay noted that Unbound has also, in a way, adopted the signature phrase of Fr. Stanley: “The shepherd cannot abandon his sheep at the first sign of danger.”
This was something Fr. Stanley wrote in a letter home, explaining why he would not abandon his missionary post, even as the threats of the Guatemalan civil war escalated.
“We have the same belief that we’re not going to abandon the people that we serve,” he said.
The connection that Chavajay feels to Fr. Stanley is strong, particularly because they spoke the same language, he said.
“I feel that I have a real blood connection with the community in Santiago and Padre A’plas because our language is the same,” he said.
Furthermore, his younger brother also became a priest and served at the same parish where Fr. Stanley had been a priest.
An increase in vocations is something that the whole region has seen since Fr. Stanley’s death, Fr. Goggin added. Five or six priests have come from Fr. Stanley’s own parish, and several more have come from the local diocese.
“My own feeling is that Fr. Stan is making some of this happen,” Fr. Goggin said.
On the morning of Fr. Stanley’s beatification, Unbound sponsored a walking pilgrimage from their hotel to the beatification Mass, with Fr. Goggin, Chavajay, and Kling in attendance. Fr. Goggin also got to take part in the procession of Fr. Stanley’s relics up to the altar at the beatification Mass.
They each said it was a privilege to be at the Mass to honor someone who had and continues to have such a strong impact on their mission.
“His same spirit really permeates what we do,” Kling said, “and we hope an event like this could really highlight the importance of walking in solidarity with people.
“You don’t have to be a martyr to change the world. Fr. Stanley’s example shows that love is a choice, and that if you make that choice you can change the world. Love requires sacrifice, it requires vulnerability, it requires dedication, and sometimes it requires everything. But the fact that 36 years later it lives on in such a profound way is a powerful testament,” he added.
“My hope is that we will have many more people (who loved) like him, because if you look at the news today, we desperately need it.”
The Unbound website is at www.unbound.org.
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Another political stunt.
SOL,
I expect some people got inspired to participate in this for political reasons but still, good for the KC helping these folks at Christmas time.
I don’t like immigration used as a tool to gain political power & a larger constituency for Democrats either, but you know without it we’re going to be in the same kind of demographic implosion as Europe & Japan face. Look at the current US birth rates. Pretty dismal.
The strategy should be to attract honest, hardworking Christian folk from South of the border & not alienate them so that they run straight into the arms of liberal politicians who want to use them to overturn conservative states like TX.
I don’t believe liberal Democrats have the immigrants’ best interest-witness their campaign to abort migrant girls’ infants. But liberals claim to & they don’t publicly show the hostility that many of our conservatives do. We might could learn something from that.
Why not try the novel idea of increasing the native American birthrate? There are many valid reasons to declare an immigration moratorium and no good ones for continuing mass Third World immigration.
Tony,
Amen to your comments. And if demographic trends continue, the majority population will eventually be traditional Catholics, Amish, orthodox Jews, and others who bother to reproduce themselves. But that may take some time.
Mrscracker, the groups you list will be swamped by the dispararte (they are hardly all Latin American or Christian) Third World mob that is being ushered into this country by a treasonous elite. They will be united, temporarily, anyway, by their resentment of the country that was foolish enough to let them in. When the remnant middle class backbone of Americais finally vanquished, the war of all against all that is barely being suppressed today, will begin in earnest. May I ask if you at least oppose Muslim immigration into Western countries?
Mrscracker,
In an age of the ongoing collapse of industrial systems predicated upon cheap energy and easy access to resources, the problem of population implosion will eventually take care of itself, as those who are willing to surmount the hardship and reproduce will replace those who cannot.
The case for increasing the population through the reception of immigrants is one predicated upon infinite growth, which is not sustainable, and as you noted, aids the leftist revolutionaries. Immigrants are already alienated in so far as they have and seek to maintain a different identity and wishful thinking will not cause integration or their voluntary abandonment of their identity. And hostility by those being overwhelmed by them is a natural and just response. Violence is more likely than not if their numbers continue to increase. At this point the consequences are probably already in motion and very little can probably be done to prevent them. What can be done though is for Roman Catholics to preserve the credibility of their church and religion, but their bishops are ignorant of the dangers of the current situation and they are content to think the status quo can eventually favor their institution.
In continuing their current course Latin bishops will discredit themselves and their religion if and when there is a reaction to the status quo and the elites behind it.
Well stated, SOL. Based on their extreme leftist position on immigration alone, it is very hard for this practicing Catholic to regard the great majority of the Church hierarchy as being anything other than an enemy of my family, country and civilization.
SOL,
Thank you for your comments too.
Our plummeting fertility rates don’t foretell anything like infinite growth. More likely shrinking and aging. Without immigration that’s going to happen a whole lot sooner.
A smaller population isn’t the problem as much as an age imbalanced population. If you take a look at the demographic data and projections you see increasing numbers of elderly and fewer and fewer young people entering the workforce.
Birth rates are falling globally in all but a couple regions. One day we may wish we had more Christian immigrants to fill the empty places in our nation.
I don’t believe mass immigration is a good idea nor do I believe in open borders but Americans seem to have so little appreciation of their own culture that they can’t be bothered to create another generation to pass it down to.
The economic system and the decisions of the elites are based on the fantasy of infinite growth.
“but Americans seem to have so little appreciation of their own culture that they can’t be bothered to create another generation to pass it down to.”
I suspect this may be more true of blue urban areas than red rural areas, which have other difficulties.
See this link for more on infinite growth: https://psmag.com/.amp/magazine/fallacy-of-endless-growth
Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem to comply with the census. How many people were in the same boat and were there because of the census? The story of Mary and Joseph not finding a room at an inn could be a story of a community overwhelmed by there being more people than the community could handle at one time.
*
The USA may be a rich powerful nation, but it does not have unlimited resources. There are only so many people that the USA can admit at one time while maintaining an orderly immigration process. A responsible host doesn’t invite more guests than the host can provide hospitality for. Illegal immigrants are gate-crashers. The mess at the Southern border is what happens when you have a large number of gate-crashers.
SOL,
Thank you very much for the link to that article.
I think that illustrates exactly what the misconceptions are about population. People are still basing their fears on theories from the 1970’s. It’s not 1972 anymore and things have changed dramatically.
Population implosion is what we need to be concerned about in the coming decades.
Though it’s certainly not a Catholic book and the author doesn’t hold our views on contraception, etc., I’d really recommend reading “Factfulness ” by Hans Rosling. Things really have changed globally and will continue to change. Not necessarily for the better, but not what was predicted in 1972 either.
God bless!